Sunrise
by Buttons579
Summary: A young man's story as he escapes his imprisonment as thrall to vampires. Will loosely follow the main quest and the Dawnguard quest line. Rated T for violence. A dark tale of psychosis.
1. Unbound

_Awake._

His eyes shot open, only to slam back shut a split second later. His head throbbed and his stomach hurled in protest. He felt his consciousness begin to slip.

_Awake_.

It wasn't a voice in his head per se, more like a previously dormant instinct that grew more and more urgent. He tried to think, but he couldn't push through the red haze in his mind. Slowly but surely, his muscles relaxed, and an alien sweetness wrapped itself over his tongue and nostrils. A sweet clouding of his senses, like a drunken stupor.

_AWAKE!_

This time when his eyelids snapped open, he sat up on almost supernatural reflex. Then he bent to the side and threw up. With his stomach empty, bile came up his throat and the bitter taste on his mouth was enough to snap him out of whatever held his will.

_I am thrall to a vampire master._

The thought crossed him in a flash, and the nagging compulsion on the back of his mind, the ever constant desire to find the one who had bit him and offer his blood, proved the statement true. He wasn't sure how or why or even when that had happened, he wasn't sure who he was or even what was his _name_, but none of those things mattered at the moment.

He had to escape.

The reasons why his consciousness suddenly broke through were unknown to him, but he couldn't waste the opportunity. He couldn't let the master know he was awake, for that would mean certain enslavement for the rest of his existence. No, he had one chance, and he intended to take it. He had to escape, _now. _He pushed himself up and stood, leaning against the damp cave wall.

The cold wetness on his fingers made him realize how thirsty he was, so he pressed his cracked lips to the trickle of water in the wall and drank. He needed weapons, he needed armor. He stumbled out the alcove he'd been expiring in and looked around. What he saw filled him with grief. He was cattle, he realized, for in front of him, he could see another thrall, clearly intended for defense purposes. An orc sat head, heavily armed, staring intently into nothingness.

He hesitated. Crouching, he took a slow, sneaky step forward, then another and another, until he directly flanked the orc. He extended a tentative hand and shook it in front of its eyes, tensing, but the thrall did not react. Slowly, ever so slowly, he reached for the ax that hung on its hips… It grunted and slowly turned its neck to face him.

_I don't think so._

He pulled his hand away and took a tentative step backwards. The thrall resumed its staring into nothingness. So it couldn't tell he was awake, but it wouldn't let itself be disarmed either. He wasn't so sure the master vampire would be as oblivious though. The good news was, as long as he didn't meet with his captor himself, he could likely walk out unnoticed. Maybe make a run for it.

Yet still, he wasn't sure about the effects of the spell of compulsion that held him. Would distance dissipate it? Could the vampire use it to summon him back? He didn't know. There was really only one way to be sure of his freedom, and that was killing the master. The conclusion took him back to the starting point, and so he resumed his search around the cave for weapons, armor and a way out.

In almost absolute darkness, guided mostly by tact, he made his way outside and up the spiraling ruins of wherever he was being held, carefully avoiding skeleton guards armed with bows. Up he went, following the vague scent of fresh air, and with each step, he knew the master was closer, for the spell within his mind grew stronger. But with it, so did his determination and he was ready to kill the vampire with his bare fists if necessary, or die trying.

He prayed. He wasn't sure to whom. To the Nine, to the Seventeen, to whoever would listen, he prayed for survival, he prayed for a weapon and he prayed that he wouldn't chance upon the master before he was ready. He was scared. He could hear his own erratic breathing; feel the cold sweat on his palms. Every little noise, every distant echo made him jump, and his muscles ached with sheer tension.

Up and up. He stopped by a doorway opening, the nagging on his mind strong enough to give him a headache, the master's presence looming just around the corner. His heart beat so hard, he feared the vampire might be able to hear it from across the room. A noise, a banging, the sound of something hitting the floor. He froze. More sounds, louder, closer. A commotion. A ruckus. Wooden chair against bare stone, the sounds of the master standing abruptly. Shouting.

Behind him, footsteps! A skeleton rushed inside the room.

_Clang!_

A ribcage flew from the doorway. Bones rattled. The heavily armored orc he'd tried to disarm ran past him into the room. More skeletons. More clangs. He snapped himself out of his daze and half snuck, half charged inside. Inside, there was chaos. The raiders, whoever they were, flowed from a door he assumed must lead outside. They lifted their exotic weapons and fired frantically, shooting down skeletons and thralls alike. The master threw spells back at them. One of the invaders clutched his heart as his life was drained off. At least two more died before the orc thrall was taken down.

Something clattered at his feet. He looked down and a flash on his peripheral vision made him duck instinctively, his hands grasping the whatever-it-was on the way as he ducked behind an overturned tabled. He stared at the object in his hands.

_Crossbow._

Loud noises, screams, his head spun. On his hands, finally, a weapon. A crossbow. Seemed like his prayers had been answered after all. One crossbow, a single bolt already nocked. Wet squelches of iron meet flesh, the metallic scent of blood, blood on his hands, on his feet, on his clothes, he wasn't sure from where or whose. Disorienting.

Then, suddenly, abruptly, silence. One last heavy thump. He stretched his neck around the table to take a peek. The last of their assailants fell to the floor, the master's lips still dripping red. It hadn't noticed him yet. He stood. His hands shook. He had one bolt, one chance. He lifted his crossbow. One chance. His finger covered the trigger and he squeezed. At the very last second, as if sensing the imminent danger, the master turned its head towards him. They locked eyes, a shiver ran through his spine –

_Thunk._

The vampire's eyeball exploded, a bolt running it through. It screamed, and then its hands flashed red and shot out, and the man felt his very life drain, flowing from his body like water. In one desperate burst of adrenaline, he vaulted over the fallen table and ran to the vampire master, the _still alive_ vampire master, who strengthened as he weakened, and using his momentum, he slammed the crossbow on the creature's face, and then again and again. It wailed. Bone cracked. He vaguely registered nails scratching him.

The vampire fell, and he fell down with it, bringing the heavy crossbow upon its skull. Through his panic and rage he could barely see, let alone think, and so he kept going, hitting, until half its face was gone and brain matter splattered the walls and the tip of his weapon, and yet he didn't stop. He didn't stop until his muscles burned and cramped so much he couldn't move, and then, only then, he found himself staring at a virtually beheaded corpse. He collapsed down in the gore, barely holding himself enough to avoid hitting his head.

And then he cried.

He wasn't sure how long he laid there, sobbing out the sheer panic of the last few moments. With the relative safety, it then crashed upon him that he did not _remember_. He had been so focused and intent on getting away, he hadn't given any attention to his amnesia, but now, now he struggled and struggled to no results. He didn't have a past, nothing beyond flashbacks of fangs piercing his throat. He didn't have a name. Nothing.

He was a nobody, and he had nothing.

_But you're free._

He was free. He clung to that one thought, and it gave him the strength to get up. He had his body, his will, his mind under no control besides his own, free at last, _free_. He stepped out of the cave. The cold air nipped at his skin, and he shivered when his bare feet touched the pure white snow. He lifted his eyes to the sky, where the constellation of the Lady shone down on him, and let himself be optimistic.

He took the first steps to the wild world around him.

* * *

**AN: This is based on a heavily modded Skyrim playthrough and will loosely follow the Dawnguard plotline, with hints of main quest and sidequests here and there. Feedback is appreciated, positive or not!**


	2. Laid to Rest - I

He rubbed his fingers on his bare chin, the remains of stubble tickling his skin, then sunk his head on the sink once more. Checking himself out on the water's mirror, he decided a shave and a haircut could do wonders to a freed prisoner's appearances. He put the knife down on the basin and walked out of the washing room and back to the bedroom he'd woken up in.

The innkeeper gave him an approving nod.

"So…" He began,

"Some traveler found you," The dark skinned woman told him. "Freezing to death on the roadside."

Admittedly, while running off into the wilderness was exhilarating at first, it definitely hadn't been his wisest decision. The weather had been cold enough that even the meanest nord with half a brain would have stayed inside.

"He left you by the city borders and moved on," the Redguard continued, handing him a chunk of bread and a mug of canis root tea. "My brother, Falion, saw to your health."

There seemed to be some implicit question on her tone as she said it, one he couldn't quite figure out. He took a bite of the food, and though it felt stale to his tongue, he ate ravenously regardless, nodding at her every word.

"I'm Jonna, by the way. What's your story? Mugged? Caught on a war skirmish?"

He washed down the dry bread he'd been chewing with a gulp of the flat tasting tea.

"Vampires," He answered, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. "And… I don't remember. There was a raid on the lair…I shot the master down. I escaped. I… can't remember anything from before."

His words were slow and hesitant, as if he hadn't talked to anyone in decades. For all he knew, he hadn't. He finished his drink and Jonna took the empty mug from his hands. He fidgeted in his seat uneasily. She gave him a compassionate look.

"That's awful -"

The conversation was cut short by a terrible out of tune singing, so bad he involuntarily grimaced. She let out a tired sigh, and he noticed for the first time the air of defeat that clung to her.

"Lurbuk. Fancies himself a bard," She explained. "He pays, so I let him stay, though I've tried to explain to him that his 'singin' is gonna get his throat cut."

And then it finally dawned on him that he had nothing to pay her with. He'd spotted his ruined crossbow on the bedstand, so whoever brought him there had left him with that at least, but he doubted he could fetch a large price with it, and was otherwise completely broke. He owed her gold even for the simple clothes he was dressed in.

"Um…" He began, nervously moving his fingers through his hair.

"Look, kid," Jonna cut him short. "It's clear you don't have any coin on you. You do look like the decent sort, and I wish I could let you off the hook, I really do, but we've got little business enough as it is. I can't have people eating and sleeping for free."

He nodded in understanding.

"Maybe I could help out," He offered. "Work it off."

The woman shook her head. "I don't need help. There's no business. Few enough reasons to pass through Morthal before the war started. Now...Well, let's just say the front door doesn't get much use. There is something, though…"

A pause. The subject seemed to make her tense.

"What is it?" He asked when she didn't continue.

"The jarl," She said ominously. "The jarl might have a job for someone…like you. Someone from the outside."

_From the outside..._

He frowned and considered inquiring further about the nature of this task, but gestured his agreement with his head instead, deciding to make questions to the one who would actually pay him.

"From the outside, huh," he muttered. "How much do I owe you? For, you know, everything."

"I'll make it fifty, if you can complete the job."

He picked his crossbow up and thoughtfully looked it over. Despite being battered, it was stunningly functional, even after being used as a hammer against a vampire master's head. It was useless without bolts to be shot, but he figured he might be able to trade it in for a sword or axe.

"Make that sixty septims, and keep me the room," He grunted, making his way to the door.

"Happy to oblige," The woman replied. "Wait! You never told me your name."

His name. He racked his memory, but it was still blank. No, not blank per se. He remembered things. He knew how to talk and walk, he understood money and how to use it, and he was quite certain he knew his way with a blade. He could even vaguely recall historical events – the oblivion crisis, the great war, the white-gold concordat. He just couldn't summon up who'd taught him these things or when or why. His knowledge was there, but his identity was gone.

And his name, he didn't know that either. He thought back to the night of his freedom, to the Lady staring down at him from the heavens.

"You can call me Rigel," He said.

"Rigel," The innkeeper repeated. "Like the star?"

He nodded, surprised that she knew, and muttered his thanks as he stepped out of the inn, only to have his legs hit full force by _something._ He stumbled, trying to recover his balance, and instinctively wrapped his arms around the child who had crashed him, in order to prevent the boy from falling.

"You okay?" He inquired. "Be careful, it's easy to slip on this ice –"

The kid flailed, punching him in the stomach, wrangling himself from Rigel's grasp.

"Let me go!" The child yelled, pushing the man away. "Let go of me, bad things come your way, let me go! Get away from me!"

_What?_

He released the boy then, more bewildered than anything.

"What are you talking abo-"

"Joric!" A woman called out mildly annoyed, running in their direction. "Come here! Joric!"

"You should go," Joric continued. "Leave. We don't want you here."

"Joric, shut up!" The woman chided, arriving up the steps. "Stop babbling!"

She gave the kid a slap on the back of his head, and the boy yelped, then ran off again. She sighed and pinched the bridge of her nose in exasperation. She was, he noticed, a beautiful woman, yet her chocolate eyes were framed by dark rings, and her expression, not unlike Jonna's, was tainted by some sort of deep exhaustion.

"I'm sorry," She began. "Please don't mind Joric. He says those things to everyone. Divines know Falion almost had him whacked the other day."

Rigel tracked strange young Joric with his eyes. "No harm done."

"Name's Idgrod," she introduced herself. "Idgrod the Younger. And you must be the frozen stranger from yesterday."

"Um, yes, the frozen stranger," He replied with a sheepish smile. "Rigel. My pleasure to meet you. I'm looking for the Jarl…perhaps you may help?"

"I can," She responded, then started walking off without waiting for him. "I'll show you the way to Jarl Idgrod."

"I thought you were Idgrod," he stated, puzzled, jogging after her. She gave him an amused look.

"We're both Idgrod, I'm her daughter. 'The youngest'."

She dragged out the last words, as if to point out it was rather obvious. He blushed a little.

"Oh. Yes, that makes sense."

Morthal was a desolate city, he thought as the now openly laughing woman gave him the tour. Less of a town and more of a settlement really, it had very few residences, most of which were stilt houses – raised on pillars of wood over the riverbed.

Fishing, he guessed, was the place's primary economic activity, though he also spotted a blacksmith and a lumber mill. The harsh weather prevented most crops from growing, but here and there he saw small cabbage and carrot plots.

There were two buildings that caught his eyes. The first, the one they were headed to, he learned to be named Highmoon Hall, and was where the Jarl lived with her family and held her audiences. But the other construction, the one that most held his gaze, was a collapsing blackened house. Standing there, abandoned and decaying, it seemed oddly in place among the village's dull houses – just another crumbling house in a crumbling city.

Idgrod saw him staring at it, but offered no comment. They arrived at the Hall, wherein he retold his whole amnesia-and-vampires story to the Jarl. Idgrod – the mom – looked very much like an older version of her daughter.

"So, life has brought you to Morthal, and to me. What purpose it serves, we will no doubt see. Welcome."

_Is she rhyming on purpose?_

"Thank you," He answered. "The reason I sought you out is, the innkeeper mentioned a job… and possible payment."

"Are you superstitious?" The jarl rasped.

Was he? He didn't know. He gave the question a full minute thought. Did he believe in things without solid rational substance? He leaned towards 'no'. Did that even matter? He needed the gold. Whatever it was, he'd have to do it, scary or not, superstitions or not.

"I am brave," He said finally, and as soon as the words were out of his mind, something clicked within him, like little bits of a puzzle falling into place, and he knew then that the statement was true.

Idgrod laughed, but there was no humor to her voice.

"An interesting reply. I assume you must have noticed our local haunted house?"

"I have, actually," He answered carefully. "I was wondering what was the story behind it."

"Bear fat over hearth fire, or so Hroggar - the owner – claims. Except his wife and daughter died in it… and he moved in with Alva the next day."

She paused, letting the implications of that sink in.

"It's not right," The younger woman whispered. "Moving in with another woman like that, the day after your family died. He didn't grieve, Hroggar, didn't seem to care at all."

He had to agree it seemed more than just a little suspicious.

"But…you have nothing on him," he guessed.

"My people won't go near the house for fear it is cursed." The jarl agreed. "But you, past less _brave_ outsider, I suppose you have no such qualms."

Rigel tilted his head in consent.

"Perfect," the elder carried on. "Then perhaps you should take a look at the ruins. If you can prove – or disprove – that Hroggar did it, I will reward you. Enough for your debt, and then some extra."

_Easy gold._

With few words, he agreed to take the job. He thanked her, and Idgrod the Younger saw him out of the hall and walked him to the pace to be investigated. There wasn't much talk then, but he was in the receiving end of looks of concern. She stopped twenty feet away from the house, and the way she planted her feet told him she'd go no further. She gave the house a long look, then hugged herself.

"Good luck out there, Rigel," Idgrod said, and he couldn't help but think such ominous tone didn't suit her. "It's…not just superstitions. There have been strange noises. Movements in the dark."

He met her eyes then, and twisted his lips in what he hoped was a reassuring smile, feeling slightly uncomfortable. "Hey, don't worry. I'll be fine… I mean, how bad can it be?"

Idgrod scoffed. "Just be careful, will you? Morthal doesn't need any more tragedies."

She gave her back to him then, and walked away without any further words. He stood there, frown in face, and watched her go. He paused for almost a full minute, letting his brain process the incident and arrive at the unavoidable conclusion that his social skills might not be just rusty, but actually lacking.

_I am shy._

That, too, he knew to be true. He made his way to the haunted house then, a smile on his face and satisfaction on his chest despite everything else.

The porch's wooden steps groaned as he made his way up them and past the half open, charred remains of the door. He pushed them aside slowly for fear they might undo themselves under his fingers, and his feet lifted little clouds of dust as he walked in. He covered his nose with his arm to prevent himself from sneezing and crept ahead carefully, wary that the floor might collapse.

The first thing that struck him was the _cold_. While Morthal was decidedly a chilly place, Hroggar's former home was positively freezing.

The house's insides were on par with its outsides. Large wooden pillars had burnt down to stubs, half the roof had collapsed, covering and crushing a great part of the residence, and the stairs that led up to what had been the second floor had had their lower part turned to cinders. He realized it might end up being harder than he expected to find any evidence on such desolate place.

_Something's not right._

He scanned the place with a scrutinizing glare. Over turned chairs, molten mugs, charred clothes. Things seemed to be in place, however, or as in place as one would expect them to be. Nothing that could prove a man's guilt. Nothing that could prove a man's innocence. Yet the nagging feeling remained, one that told him he must be missing something.

He took short, tentative steps forward. It was _so_ cold. It was always cold that up to the north, but the shades of black and gray, the lack of vivid colors, seemed to make the place icier. It felt as if every inch he moved ahead made the temperature drop. Sunlight bled through the cracks on the walls and caught on the suspended ash, making a strange show of looping dust. The warmth, however, seemed unable to seep in, and so did sound, for the place was eerie silent.

It all felt utterly wrong. As if the house was on its own bubble outside the world.

He kicked a wooden board that stood on his way to the center of the house, where the hearth would be. It snapped in half with a crack, and he coughed at the puff of ash it lifted. The soot now covered his whole face and clung to his buzz cut blonde hair. He wiped it away from his eyes with his wrists. He could see his breath coming out in little puffs. His fingers began to stiffen.

_So cold…_

His skin crawled with goosebumps and told himself to just _move _and focus on the task at hand, but his body seemed to resist the idea. He shook his head to clear it.

There! The hearth. Completely destroyed, only rocks remained, but he could see the distinct shape of a fireplace. He marched sluggishly, dragging foot after foot, the wood creaking under his weight, unable to shake off the feeling of misplacement. He crouched down, extended shaky, frigid fingers to touch the cool stone, and moved them in a straight line, drawing it on the ash.

_So cold…_

He stared at it, at that one drawn line. Stood in perfect quiet, looking at it over and over as the cold crawled from the floor to his boots and feet, up his legs. A wave of exhaustion hit him then, and he closed his eyes. It crept up and up, the paralyzing frost…up and up, like knives tearing through his bones and muscles and skin. A chill ran through his spine. His thoughts got fuzzy. The line. The line in the ash, it was important, what was it?

Something clicked in his brain, and he stood up abruptly. His head spun, and he leaned against the chimney to recover his balance, then pulled his hand back as if it had been bit. It had, in a way – his skin ached from frostnip. The sound of his heart was too loud in his ears. Someone had been there. Someone had been to that house before him, and _moved_ _things_. He could see it now, the clean patches on the floor, places where ash hadn't yet deposited.

But that couldn't be, because the Jarl had sworn to him no one dared going inside.

And in one of the gaps, already slightly covered with dust again, he suddenly visualized with perfection the outline of a crouched, childlike body. A corpse that had been there, and now it wasn't. He tensed, nervously rubbing his cold, blackened hands together. Something prickled his nape, like a frozen breath, and he abruptly turned around to face whatever it was, hands reaching for a nonexistent blade –

Nothing.

He took a step backwards. Frost began to slink on the floor, giving a white hue to the blackened surface. It encircled him inch by inch. It crossed his mind then that he was walking over the remnants of people. Of a woman and a child. And now it seemed the locals were right, and souls still haunted that place of death.

His heartbeat raced and blood roared in his ears with the unexpected knowledge that he was not alone. Their names, their names, what had they been? A thin strand of ice encircled itself on his shoe. He tried to pull back, but it was stuck. He tugged his frantically, hands shaking.

_What had their names been?_

"Helgi!" He called out in a strangled cry of panic.

A moment of silence. The ice stopped still. And then, on his mind, for a brief second, he heard anguished screams.

_"Who's there? Is that you, father?"_

The childish voice seemed to speak inside his head, and he clenched his hands over his ears, air coming off his lungs in short breaths.

"I'm a friend," he half begged.

"_Liar!_" The phantom whispered, and the ice shot up his leg and hips. He screamed.

"Joric!" He gasped out. "I know Joric. And, and Idgrod and Jonna. We're friends! I'm a friend!"

The frost stopped moving again, but he could still feel it burning his calf and his thighs, and his muscles spasmed, making him shiver furiously.

"_Will you play with me?_"

"I…" He hesitated. "If I do, will you tell me who set the fire?"

He didn't think about the risk he was taking until the words were already out of his mouth.

_"Yes…" _The ghost positively hissed, and a chill went through his spine. _"Yes…in the dark. The others only come in the dark."_

He didn't like that. He didn't like that at all. He felt like he was getting deeper and deeper into trouble, if that was possible.

"What do you mean, the others?"

_"Find me tonight... you will know."_

Static buzzed in the air, making every hair on his body stand on end. And then the ice holding him receded, crawling back and away, and just like that, she was gone. He stood still for what felt like a long while, listening to the sounds of silence and catching his breath. When he finally felt he was able to move, he quickly pushed himself out from the nearest window and stumbled straight to the inn for some well-deserved rest.


	3. Laid to Rest - II

Rigel didn't speak as he limped his way through the heavily falling snow and to the basin to wash the grime off his face. He offered no words as he picked up a bottle of nord mead from the counter and popped it open with his teeth. Was he a drinker?

_Every nord is a drinker._

Though the taste was somewhat flat, the liquid felt pleasant down his throat, and it did wonders to warm his insides. He felt mildly uneasy at his ever growing debt, but his need for a drink felt even greater. All the while, Jonna watched him with peculiar interest. He figured she'd be curious – he did come out alive though not unscathed from what had to be Morthal's most interesting house.

But he didn't want to tell her a story, not really. He didn't want to talk at all, and so he finished his drink and made his way out before she could utter a single word. He pulled the hood over his head, to protect him from the cold and from snooping eyes both. His next stop was getting himself a functional weapon, and that turned out to be simple to solve.

The local blacksmith was poorly supplied and had little to offer when it came down to weapons and armor. Mostly, he sold pans, horse shoes, fishing hooks, nails and other generalities to fill the town's needs Even so, he managed to exchange his battered crossbow for a simple iron blade and wooden shield. It was functional but not particularly durable, and he made note to get something better as soon as he could afford it.

He spotted Idgrod the Younger as he walked down the smith's steps, and pushed his hood down to let her see him. He needn't have, however – she was already walking his way.

"Ah, still alive, I see," She greeted, and her eyes briefly darted to his newly acquired equipment. "Since you are out here and not in there, I'll assume you've found something… have you any reason you might be needing those?"

He rested his palm on his nape reflexively. "I'm sorry about...back then. You were right. It _was_ a haunted house. I met the little girl's ghost."

The woman's eyes widened slightly. "You should have reported it to mother right away. Come," She made as if to walk, but he halted her.

"Actually, I… still have nothing on him. She was angry, Helgi, she didn't much want to talk, but..."

"But?" She pressed.

"There was, evidence… that someone had been there. And, Helgi mentioned 'the others', who only show up in the dark. So I got these," He patted the weapon and shield, "And I figured I'd go back when the moons are out."

She analyzed him critically. "Do you even know your way with a blade?"

He shrugged. "I don't remember. But, I think so, and hey…how bad can it be?"

The last sentence was punctuated by a guilty smile and apologetic look. Idgrod's lips curled in a slight smirk, and she shook her head slowly, as if staring at a misbehaving yet amusing child.

"Just don't end up as yet another case to be investigated," She replied with a sigh, but there was no real bite to her tone, and he felt his previous rudeness had been forgiven.

"I won't," he promised, more to himself than to her. "Ah, about the Jarl, do you think maybe you could…"

"I'll let my mother know of your progress so far," The woman cut him off before he could find his words. "Meanwhile, you can go figure out the right end of the sword to hold into. And if you see Joric, tell him…you know what, never mind. He'll show up when his empty stomach overpowers his stubbornness."

Rigel acquiesced and bode her farewell, then moved to a quiet spot near the town's edge and unsheathed his new blade. He followed Idgrod's advice and spent the rest of the day honing his rusty sword skills. It was a good way to take his mind off the fact that he would, albeit reluctantly, return to a haunted house in the dark.

He poked the air with the weapon. The limp on the leg that had taken the worst of the ghost's anger was inconvenient at first, but it faded away as he exercised. It turned out he did know quite a bit of fencing, though that was unsurprising. Basic swordplay training was fairly common in Skyrim, if not completely essential.

He hadn't been stabbing at nothing for long when a couple little children sat down to watch. The girl was about Joric's age, but the boy couldn't have been older than five. Their names, he eventually learnt, were Agni and Virkmund.

The two chattered as they watched him, and listening gave away a lot about Morthal. Besides Joric, the two were the only two children in the small settlement; Virkmund's mother had left home to join the civil war effort and fight for the rebels, and the boy now lived with his father, the town lumberjack. Agni's parents had also perished in the conflict, and she had been adopted by the local wizard, Falion – Jonna's brother.

The light from the setting sun eventually caught on the water's mirror, giving it a reddish tint, and Rigel took it as a cue to stop and rest. He leaned on his sword to catch his breath, the children who had been watching him already long gone. A fog slowly rose from the sea, adding its chill to the nip in the air, and again he could see his breath coming out of his lungs. When his feet took him back to the ghostly place, he could hear the crunch of snow.

It was only when he was already by the door that it crossed his mind that all his weaponry would be useless if it was too dark to see. He turned his neck back to stare at the town, where the last tendrils of light faded, dissipating in the fog. A couple guards came out of Highmoon Hall, each holding a torch. One stood his post, whilst the other began patrolling the streets. The flickering flames were soon the only source of light in the pitch black of the night.

He contemplated his problem for a moment. Could he take a torch into the burnt down house? Get into a likely fight without setting it ablaze again? Did he even want to? Wouldn't that alert whatever he was hunting down? Could the Others see in the dark? He knew vampires and werebeasts could, and so did the Khajiit. Was there a spell that could help his vision?

_Can I do magic at all?_

A pause.

Once again, general information flooded in from a corner of his mind, and he knew that technically, every sentient being _could_ do magic. Most people were actually gifted with an innate spell they could naturally cast without any effort at all, and that spell was used to determine one's magic school affinity. He looked inside his brain for clues on channeling his magical energy and met a dead end.

_Not a mage._

He placed his hand on the leftover door boards, starting to grow anxious with the situation.

"Helgi," he called, to no answer.

"Helgi," he tried again. "I can't see in the dark."

Nothing. "I really can't help you if I can't – Ahh!"

The clear, distinct sensation of a frozen hand intertwining fingers with his, sending electrical shocks up his arm. His heart did a leap and he gasped involuntarily. Then the ghostly hand slipped away from his, and he extended his arm until the feeling of spectral fingertips brushed against his palm again. He walked in, chasing the invisible touch. He heard the clacking of debris moving out of his way as he blindly wandered, his free hand on the pommel of his sword all along.

And then he groped the air and felt nothing. He waved his open palms around, seeking, but the tiny spectral hands were gone. He held his breath and slowly turned around, yet the lisps of moonlight that seeped through the wooden cracks were not nearly enough to show him a way out. He opened his mouth to speak and felt as if the air would freeze his tongue off.

"Helgi!" He hissed, tense. From inside his boots, he felt something touch his toes. Something _icy._ His heart made a funny little hop on his chest when he considered the possibility that this insane ghost wasn't actually planning to let him go. "This isn't funny!"

_This was a bad idea._

The cold thing slithered its way up his lower members, going from uncomfortable to downright painful when it reached his knees. He gritted his teeth and tried to take a step back. Stuck. He crouched down and grabbed his leg, tugging it up -

He was buffeted by a gust, a well packed punch of ice straight to his chest that made him lose his balance, just as his leg was abruptly set free. Cursing, he fell down with a thud that was silenced by a conveniently placed mount of snow. He spat off the slush he had inadvertently swallowed, touching the floor for support to push himself back to standing position.

Before he could get up, however, something tugged at his hand. A wave of goosebumps travelled from the tip of his fingers all the way to the bottom of his spine, making his hairs stand on end. And then something clicked inside his brain.

_Oh. She wants me to crawl._

If he hadn't been so on edge, he would have been irritated at the roundabout way the ghost had let him know it. Then again, if he hadn't been so on edge, he might have arrived at that conclusion sooner. He shifted, got down on his fours and crawled forward, still following his invisible lead –

He hit something face first. Hard.

_Son of a – gods damn it!_

He rubbed his bruised forehead with one hand while feeling around with the other, until he had a vague spatial idea of where he was about to crawl in. It was a tight space. A very, very tight space. He took three deep breaths and counted to five. The idea bothered him, and it bothered him beyond merely how stupid it was. He realized right then and there that he wasn't very fond of dark, tight spaces.

He touched his elbows on the irregular wooden floor, and then he lowered himself further and further, until his chin was in direct contact with the layer of soot that covered the ground. Then he put his right arm in front of him and pulled his body ahead. He repeated the procedure with his right arm. His body inched forward and his shoulders got stuck on the tight passage.

_This isn't okay._

He twisted his body sideways and one shoulder got through. He wriggled.

_This isn't okay._

Now that the left shoulder was past, he managed to lean his elbow on the debris to give him enough traction to pull the rest of the body through. His right elbow was compressed against the wreckage and he pressed his lips tightly shut in pain.

_This is so very not okay – oh fuck me!_

At once, he pushed with his feet while pulling with his arms, and finally, _finally_ his thorax passed the opening. He kicked his way further in, trying hard not to cough, the ashes on his face extremely irritating to his eyes and airways. His progress was painfully slow, and though he attempted to be quiet, the sound of his belly rasping on wood seemed unreasonably loud. He crawled, and he crawled, and he crawled.

He crawled for what felt like hours, until his muscles burned, until he could barely keep his swollen eyes open, until his nose was dripping from the pollution and the cold. He moved forward on blind trust, trust on the unstable vengeful ghost of a girl he did not know, and the more he moved, the further he got, more entangled he felt. Progressing was hard work, yet it was monotonous by nature, so eventually his thoughts caught up to him.

He wondered if the house had been this big when he first laid eyes on it.

_I'm just moving really, really slow._

He wondered if it should be this dark with both Masser and Secunda out.

_I'm just under a lot of stuff right now._

The thought wasn't calming.

He wondered how stable was the pile of heavy stuff sitting on his head.

He wondered what could he do in this position, should he meet any of the Others.

He wondered if the Others couldn't just set fire to the pile of trash he had gladly wrapped himself in, like a bug on a spider's web.

Maybe they would send something in behind him. They could send any manner of daedra inside that hole – crawling Daedroths, Scamps or Clannfears. He couldn't turn around.

He would be able to do nothing but wait, wait and scream as the thing ate away his toes and feet and legs, wait and scream and pray that he would faint or die quickly from the shock rather than agonize slowly.

Or maybe…maybe they would send something from _ahead_ of him, and then the situation would be the same except worse, because he would have to watch until the monster pecked out his eyes and tore apart his face –

He got stuck.

He'd gotten stuck three or four times before, but now he felt a little bit more desperate to free himself. He tugged his body hard and it passed through, but his struggle destabilized the structure and he heard things fall down below him, closing his path. He stopped perfectly still.

_It's okay. It's okay. Just keep following the spectral hand –_

The hand.

_The_ _hand._

When was the last time he felt the hand? He couldn't remember.

_I lost the hand_.

His brain reeled, desperate for answer. How far back had he lost the hand?

_I don't know!_

His skin covered in cold sweat, his heart beating so fast he couldn't hear anything else. He opened his mouth to call for the ghost, but his breathing was coming out in little bursts too short to enable speech. He thought he heard footsteps approach but wasn't sure. And then he heard voices – actual, physical ones. His mind couldn't decide whether that was a source of further panic or of relief.

"…fucking place is coming apart." A hoarse masculine voice sounded. "How are the preparations coming along?"

"I have little Rodrick eating from my palm already," A woman replied. "I plan to turn him next week, when -"

"Tomorrow," the man interrupted. "Turn him tomorrow. Immortal or not, we should haste. The Volkihar have been stirring, and I need this town under my control as soon as possible."

There was a pause. "Do you think they found _her_?" a third, higher pitched feminine voice queried.

"They haven't. They mustn't have." the man snapped a bit too quickly. "We would know if she had returned. But they are close, and we must topple them now, while there's still time, because once she's awake, we're done for."

"I'll see to it," the first woman concluded. "What about you, Laelette? What is taking you so long to turn that husband of yours?"

"I am –"

Many things happened at once. The temperature that had been steadily dropping reached an all-time low, and the woman's speech was interrupted by a deafening screech. He covered his ears with his hands, but the disorienting sound receded as abruptly as it had begun.

And then he heard rather than saw the debris being brutally ripped from above him by some invisible force. The wreckage flung through the ceiling and opened a large hole in the roof, letting shafts of moonlight illuminate the stunned faces of the bystanders. For one long moment, they all stood perfectly still, each one processing the situation laid before them.

He was snapped back to reality by something blinking behind the three dark shapes that stood over him – a blue, ghastly shape of what was once Helgi. He assumed that information because he knew it could be no one else, for the figure lacked any semblance of humanity. Its sockets lacked any eyes, and the semblance of skin was riddled with moving bubbles as if the entire figure was boiling. His nose was assaulted by the scent of burning flesh.

The creature's jaw dropped open in an unnatural way, half the mandible hanging from one side, and it let out another ear-piercing scream and speeded forward, sliding over nothing and hitting one of the female vampires face on. The collision was punctuated by the sound of breaking glass, and the woman fell to her knees, clutching her chest tightly where a thick icicle had been lodged. Then she fell to the side with a damp _thud_.

It was enough to snap him out of his paralysis, and he rolled forwards and landed on his feet, drawing his sword. He let instinct take its course, and his body automatically adjusted his position so that his right foot was in the front together with his hand that held the blade, while his left hand stood behind defensively covering his ribs.

His form, however good it was, turned out to be useless, because the vampire master had already reacted and he was hit not with a weapon but with a spell, crimson tendrils extending themselves to wrap around him like claws. He felt right then as if his very life was being drained from him, heard the air escape from his lungs together with his vitality. His pulse quickened, his heart beating so hard it hurt. His sword hand shook and his knees wobbled.

More debris flew around, breaking the male vampire's concentration and interrupting the spell. On the corner of his vision, Rigel saw where the rubble was going – straight to the second female vampire's face. The woman tried to defend herself and block the projectiles with her arms, but they were coming too quickly and in too great quantity.

He didn't stop to look, taking the distraction to run up to his opponent instead. His feet moved automatically, the one in front turning outwards, the one on the back pushing to give him momentum as he twisted his body sideways and swung his blade in a low arc. In the dim light, he could hardly see what he was striking, yet to his surprise the sword hit flesh with a sickening squelch.

Slightly stunned by the unexpected impact, he pulled the blade free and clumsily thrusted it forward again, but this time it only met air. He realized a split second too late that the movement had left him completely open, and brought up his elbow to shield his face on pure reflex. His reaction was misplaced, for a hard kick came from his side and hit him in the ribs. The strength was such that he was sent flying and crashed on the debris on the opposite side of the room.

His blade clattered on the ground. With his eyes barely open, he caught a glimpse of something looming over him, and he rolled sideways right before a foot descended and shattered the floor where he'd been. He felt his cheek being torn by splinters and lashed out blindly with his feet, feeling around for his blade with his hands.

He wasn't fast enough. A hand with long, sharp nails came down and grabbed him by the collar. He was brought up, struggling, until he was face to face with the fanged beast. For one second their eyes met, and he had a close up of the haunting crimson irises. Then he snapped out of it and reacted, clapping his spread palms over the vampire's ears, immediately following it with a headbutt. The beast let go of him and he fell butt down on the ground.

_I'm actually decent at fighting?_

The thought came to him as he went down, and it came together with the impulse to make the best out of his position and throw a sweep kick. As soon as his behind hit the ground he moved, opening his legs like scissors, and his heel caught on the vampire's and brought him down. He scurried to his feet and backpedaled away from the enemy until his back hit a wall. Under Masser's faint glow, he saw a shadow of the beast approach once again, and lifted his fists up to his chin in preparation.

He sidestepped, dodging the first punch that came his way. Unfortunately, his luck didn't hold, and he was hit with a flurry of blows that knocked the breath out of him. He might have done better if only he could see, but as it was, all he could do was barely enough to avoid him being knocked out. He had a hard time moving around the room without stumbling over the debris. Suddenly his feet went splash as they hit something wet, something slick, and he slipped down, liquid soaking up his clothes.

The vampire approached, lifted his foot to give a killing blow. Rigel braced himself to defend as best as he could. And then something went _woosh_ over his head and he felt the current of wind on his scalp as the thing only barely missed him.

Something cold and damp splashed him on the face.

The blow he had been waiting didn't come.

He looked up at his paralyzed opponent, blinked, wiped the liquid off his cheek. In the dark, he raised his palm against the moonlight and looked at the cool viscous fluid on his fingers. It was blood. He brought his hand down slowly, tentatively brushing his fingers against the icicle that had grown off the wall, right over his head, and impaled the vampire master.

No, impaled was an understatement. The sharp ice shard had ran the vampire's head through, the tip coming in through its mouth and out at the back of its skull, brain matter spread over the floor. The blood flowed from the beast's face over the ice, sliding slowly right down to its base, occasionally dripping down the floor. The body hung limp, hanging from the spike, precariously held by a thin string of jaw muscle that was all still connecting the upper and lower parts of the skull.

"Uh," he muttered, feeling sick. He tried to stand, slipped, splashed again in the liquid and fell on something soft just as his brain arrived at the conclusion that _it was blood_ and that the thing cushioning his fall was actually the body of one of the vampire females. He closed his eyes, got on his fours and crawled his way off that corner of death.

When he opened them again, the room was lit up by a blue glow. Something caught his eyes: his sword. He memorized its position as best as he could, but he kept getting distracted by little pieces of viscera hanging from remains of furniture. He tried his best to pay the gruesome details no mind and focus at what was at the center of that scene of horror – the floating ghost of a little girl, now looking perfectly at peace.

He tensed, considered making a run for it, then remembered how quick a fatal icicle had come to be and decided to risk attempting communication.

"Helgi," He began tentatively. "You're, uh, you're looking much better."

The ghost turned its childish face to him and smiled with a misplaced empty gaze. She was missing some of her milk teeth, and her eye sockets were bare. It lifted one of its palms abruptly, and he saw with the corner of his eye that his blade had reacted to the movement and now floated a good meter over the ground. Then the child brought its palm back down and his sword flew straight at him, missing him by less than five centimeters and burying itself on the wooden pillar to his side. He held his breath.

"Um… not that you weren't looking good before," he tried to make amends. "But you're, just amazing now –"

Helgi gave its back to him and hovered over to the vampire master's body. Her spectral hand picked something up from the corpse, and the movement was enough to rupture the tissue that held the body together. The torso and lower skull slid to the ground with a thump, while the upper skull remained badly balanced on top of the ice spike.

Rigel's stomach twisted.

The ghost moved back toward him and handed him what she'd picked up – a book. He accepted the item, looked at its cover, then at Helgi, back at the cover, back at the ghost. Ever so slowly, he flipped the book open and skimmed over the text. It was the vampire master's - Movarth was his name - journal. He didn't bother to look much further, assuming whatever was registered in there would have to suffice as information for the Jarl.

He cleared his throat. "Thank you, this will really help me out… also thank you for saving me back there, you actually did most of the job…uhh…" he trailed off when the ghost widened its grin.

Then it opened its mouth and uttered one single haunting sentence.

_"Revenge solves everything."_

She flashed out of existence. Not wanting to prolong his stay, he retrieved his blade, pocketed the journal and stumbled out of the house as fast as he could, his aches catching up to him as he did so. He had more bruises than he could count, his soaked body shook from the cold and his eyes were still swollen and irritated from the ashes.

_What a day._

* * *

The Jarl, it turned out, was more than satisfied by his findings. The journal detailed not only Movarth's story but also his plans for Morthal. He was paid his share in gold, as they had agreed, but the Jarl surprised him by offering the remains of Hroggar's house for him to rebuild. It wasn't a bad idea, truly, if he could look past the spooky factor of it. Now that it was hopefully un-haunted, the ruins could be completely torn down to give place to a nice, cozy house.

Beyond that, he could see himself there. He liked the idea of a future. He could see himself getting a job in the guard, eventually rising up to captain. He would maybe court the Jarl's daughter…have a family. A pair of feisty children. The more he thought about it, the fonder he was of the idea of settling.

He would have said yes, if not for the Dawnguard. They arrived a week after his adventure, five of them and loaded with gold, much to Jonna's delight. He recognized the uniforms first, by the familiar sun emblem he'd seen on the night of his awakening. And then there were their weapons – each one was equipped with a sturdy crossbow. He knew right away that those were the people responsible for the raid on the Master's lair, and indirectly for his freedom.

They came about too late, as Idgrod was happy to sharply point out. Still, they combed through the lair for any leads that might take them to other vampires, then searched the region and fortified every home with silver powder and fire salts. They also spent an interesting amount of time talking to the wizard, Falion, so much that even Jonna began to feel that despite their gold, they'd overstayed their welcome.

And then the time came that they declared they would leave. In the end, his sense of duty was louder. He wouldn't be alive if people like those did not dedicate themselves to fighting the horrors of the night. He felt the need to pass that on, too. He carried a strange impulse to be a hero. The sun was setting when he went to inform the Jarl of his decision. The Dawnguard would leave in the morning, and he'd made up his mind to join them.

When he arrived, Jarl Idgrod was alone in the throne room, and it gave him an uneasy feeling that she had been expecting him.

"My Jarl," he began, but she silenced him with a gesture.

"There is no need to inform me of your decision. I have seen it." The old woman leaned forward, and the fireplace bathed her face in sinister light. He felt an odd sense of foreboding. "Stay. There is still time."

He tilted his head slightly. "My Jarl, the Dawnguard –"

"Stay," she cut him short. "Stay, or set in motion a chain of events that will soon spiral out of your control."

He swallowed dry. For a long moment, all that could be heard were the cracking embers and the howling wind. And then:

"Won't such events unravel themselves anyway, regardless of whether I stay or go, regardless even of whether or not I'm involved?"

Idgrod answered it with a humorous laugh. "Oh, they will. Such is the way of fate. But you could at least give yourself a chance to be happy before it all ends."

He bit his bottom lip nervously and thought her words over and over. "I've noticed that you seem to have…your own way of knowing things. So…am I dying?"

"The world is dying," she replied plainly, emotionless. "And yet your answer is still no. Don't say anything, I see it in your eyes. The stupid adventurous spirit of youth. So be it. I knew this would come to be…stop by the blacksmith tomorrow. I saw your crossbow fixed. You'll be needing it, won't you? Take it as a parting gift."

He smiled then, and when he met her eyes, she smiled back, albeit sadly.

"Thank you," he said, and he honestly meant it.


	4. Dawnguard

The way from Morthal to Fort Dawnguard in the hold of Riften turned out to be a very long one. The leader of the party, a woman by the name of Beleval, wasted no time in bossing her newest recruit around. Rigel didn't mind it, not really, and he complied quietly when she assigned him to every single mechanical task such as breaking camp in the mornings and gathering firewood by night.

They stopped three or four times in villages on the way, looking for any news regarding vampire activity. Though the sole purpose of their work was to rid Nirn of the bloodsucking beasts, and they would do it free of charge if necessary, they still accepted gold for their work, and that was how the guild kept itself going.

Untrained as he was, he wasn't allowed to participate in any of the faction's activities, so twice he stood back tending to the equipment while Beleval chased leads with the band. On the first time it happened, the reports proved to be only rumors. On second occasion, they stopped by the small mining village of Shor's stone and there he waited in the inn until the wooden door was kicked open. The first two things he noticed on the returning team was that a member was missing, and that their leader was bleeding profusely.

"Woah, woah," he babbled as he rushed forward to greet them, helping a limping Beleval out of a guard's arms and into a seat.

She looked as battered as the others, with scrapes and dirt all over her face. One of her eyes was blackened and the bottom of her lip was split, but what caught his eye was that half of her pointy left ear was literally hanging. He felt something damp on his fingers and realized it was blood, flowing freely from the woman's forearm. He stared at the crimson fingertips for a good five seconds, feeling something in his brain whirr into action.

Then he turned around and searched for the innkeeper with his eyes.

"I'll need alcohol," he asked. "Brandy or whiskey would be best. Also a dagger, needles and string... silk, if you have any. A small tray with embers...Would be testing my luck that you have lavender, but if do… Oh, and clean rags! Boil me some, if you will."

His hands moved automatically, unfastening the straps that held the gauntlets together. The wound below didn't look promising.

"I hope you know what you're doing. Are you a medic of sorts?" The woman questioned, pushing a strand of sweat-plastered hair behind her unharmed ear.

"I…don't know," he admitted. "I told you. Don't remember anything from before I escaped."

"Very reassuring."

Rigel blushed. "Look, I do have a notion, all right? I don't remember being taught this, but I can tell some things. The tendon wasn't severed so you'll recover the mobility of your fingers...probably. Um… it's hard to know about the ear. Elves are built a bit different from humans…I'll try stitching it back."

"Very reassuring," the other repeated.

The innkeeper rushed back in with what she could find. He assessed the materials: she had the needles, a roll of wool and a silken dress, the tray with embers and the bottle of fine Cyrodillic Brandy, a pan with relatively clean, still steaming rags and a knife. They didn't have any lavender, but he'd have to make do.

Now what?

Fortunately, his instincts had an answer. He grabbed a needle, bent it with his teeth and stuck it in the tray together with the dagger, then uncorked the flask and rubbed the liquid on his hand. He stared at the roll of wool, then at the silk, and went for the latter, pulling a string from the dress and washing it down with the brandy. The bartender gave him a disapproving glare.

He slipped the string on the needle and looked at Beleval.

"This will hurt," he warned, then spilled the remains of the bottle on her arm.

"NIGHT MOTHER'S TITS!"

Rigel winced, grabbed a piece of cloth, twisted the excess water from it, and wiped the wound with as much delicacy as he could muster, then he picked the needle up and hesitated.

"This…might sting. Though… it will probably hurt less than cleaning the wound or, you know, actually getting it."

"Oh by the love of Mara, newfish, just get this over with."

His hands trembled a little, and he took a deep breath.

That's no good. You know the drill. Right loop, right loop, left loop, pull.

Right loop, right loop. Left loop, pull. Cut. Repeat. He did it eight times for the arm, twelve times for the ear. When he was done, he asked for another bottle of brandy, washed the wounds with it, then drank down a long gulp. He cleaned the sweat from his brow and only then allowed himself to take a deep breath, sliding down to the floor.

Beleval snatched the bottle from his hand and emptied it with a single movement, then wiped her mouth and looked at her arm.

"Well, well. And here I thought you were only good for cutting wood, eh?" The elf kicked him lightly on the ribs. "You should have told me you had medical expertise when we met. I would have taken it easier on the manual labor if I knew you were joining to be a scholarly type."

Something told him that last sentence was a lie. He stood up and scratched his head sheepishly. "Just as surprised myself… I also know a bit of fighting. No magic though. Might have been a legion medic… Vigilant of Stendarr, maybe, or priest of Kyne."

Even as he spoke, he tore pieces of the silk and wrapped them around the arm and then the ear, bandaging them up. His fingers moved deftly and with ease. It crossed his mind for the first time that if he did want to support the Dawnguard to the best of his abilities, the front lines might not be his place. He tied the last cloth knot, closed his eyes and rubbed his hands together, feeling the little puzzle pieces come together in his head.

"I …am a pacifist."

There was a moment of silence, then Beleval laughed and turned to him with renewed interest.

"You're joining the wrong order, newfish. There's no peace to be made with vampires."

He shook his head, crossed his arms and looked down, thinking, carefully gathering together the bits of emotion surfacing. "I'm…not naïve. I understand what you're doing and how it's necessary, and I want to take part and do my best, but…" He rubbed his chin with his thumb. "At the end of the day, they're people too… just really sick people, and I'd like to help them, if I can."

The elf scoffed. "And you don't resent them? You're not even a little bit angry for what they did to you?"

"…no." He answered, surprising himself. "I'm…actually not. I was never after revenge. I…I killed him, Beleval. I killed the vampire Master who trapped me and I felt no pleasure in doing it. I just… just want people not to suffer what I did anymore."

He shifted on his feet and swallowed.

"Pah! To each his own, I suppose." The woman stood and flexed her wrist. "Me? I just want to take down as much of the fuckers I can before they get me… Like they did to poor Brandon. We'll perform his passing rites at dawn, following the Order's way. Show up if you wish. One way or the other, be ready to get going by midday. We're little less than two days from Fort Dawnguard, now."

* * *

He did show up at the funeral. It was modest yet traditional. They burned the young man's body in a pyre, his head facing the rising sun, his eyes covered by golden Septims. His sword was put over his chest and set alight with him, but they kept the crossbow and armor. Though donations did come in steadily, the Dawnguard was still in no shape to let such equipment unrecovered.

Just as they marched out of town, they were joined by another newbie: a young blonde with long hair and a silly goatee whose name was Agmaer. He was grateful for the boy's entrance. Agmaer was cheery and rather eager to please, and having another recruit with whom he could share the repetitive manual labor was a relief. The boy did have a tendency to talk a bit too much, but it was something Rigel soon grew used to and even found a bit endearing.

"So, hey! I bet you've killed lots of vampires, right?" Agmaer gibbered as the two took down the tents and put out the bonfires from the night before.

"Mmmh." He folded the tents' cloth and packed them into the footmen's backpacks.

"I haven't really killed anyone, ever" the other whispered. "But I'm ready to be a warrior, Talos knows I am! I got my pa's axe and I've trained, I've trained a lot! I've fended off wolves and spiders and when the Dawnguard passed on Shor's Stone, I knew it was my time!"

He packed the bedrolls while vaguely picking up whatever orders Beleval was shouting on the background. "Aha. Your pa's axe."

"I mean, I know I don't look like much right now, but you'll see -"

They went like this for hours and hours. The only time Agmaer wasn't talking was when his mouth was busy eating. Rigel mostly replied with nods and grunts, which did not discourage the boy in the least. Yet the babbling seemed to grow nervous the closer they got to Fort Dawnguard and Agmaer got gradually more and more restless.

"Do you think they'll take me in? I'm sure they'll take you in, I mean, just look at you, all wide shoulders and quiet and serious and so calm and in control. But me, I don't know, I don't know what I'll do if they send me back? What will I tell my pa, divines, what will my sisters think?!"

Rigel took a deep breath and adjusted his backpack on his shoulders. "I'm sure they'll take you in," he said.

"You really think so? Because I don't know, I'm, I'm really unprepared, aren't I? I mean, who am I kidding, a woodcutter's ax? I bet they have all kinds of barbarians joining up left and right, heck, even you, I heard what you did back in town, you're a medic, no one would turn a medic down –"

The two walked in the back of the formation and Rigel noticed when the troops' speed picked up. Even with a loss, the sight of familiar ground lifted the troops' spirits. They were on higher ground and moving downhill, the path ahead rather clear, so Rigel decided it would be the best moment for a pause.

He halted. Agmaer, too immersed in his anxiety, bumped him hard and the two almost fell.

"Why'd you stop? Is something wrong? There's nothing wrong, is there? Because if something is wrong –"

Rigel sighed and placed a hand on the blonde's shoulder, silencing him.

"Look, kid, just… take a deep breath, will you? You're exhaling nervousness. Yeah? Good. Count to ten."

"Onetwothreefourfivesix-"

Rigel let go of the boy's shoulder and lifted both his open palms, halting the kid again.

"Listen, you said your father was a big warrior and you wanted to make him proud, isn't that true? And…and all your sisters have already left home to take one job or the other and you're the only one left."

"Yeah!" The boy's eyes glinted.

"That must be a lot of pressure." He prompted.

"Oh, yeah! You have no idea. My eldest sis, she's so talented –"

Rigel rested his hand on his nape and started walking at slow pace. The boy followed. "Point is," he interrupted. "You said it yourself. This is your time, isn't it? So maybe… comparing yourself to them and all…isn't helping. Even your dad had to start somewhere, and… they'll train you... train us. Don't worry. You're able-bodied and willing to learn, aren't you?"

"Yes! Yes, I am!"

"Then, see? That should be enough. You just have to be calm and have confidence in what you know... but also awareness of what you don't. All the rest will come with hard work. No one is born ready, kid."

"Yeah! You're right! My time to learn, my time to shine!" He frowned. "Don't call me kid though. You can't be that much older than me."

He paused. How old was he? He didn't know, and the thought bothered him a bit. Age wasn't like a name - he couldn't just pick a random number. He opened his mouth to reply he didn't know but Agmaer was on a row.

"Woah! By the love of Mara, Rigel, check out that castle!"

This time, he allowed himself to share the boy's excitment. Not only the valley was covered in exuberant nature, the castle in itself was indeed impressive, its towers poking up at the horizon, its spirals twisting on top of the hill's curves. They picked up the pace and caught up to the rest of the group, jumping over a creek.

He left Agmaer behind and ran up to Beleval in the lead. Despite the deep rings under her eyes, her features were the most relaxed he'd ever seen. He instinctively closed his eyes when he spotted a waterfall and savored the input from his other senses: the cold droplets of water on his skin, the crunching of the earth beneath his boots, the hissing of the water as it hit the ground, the smell of damp earth.

He heard laughter and opened his eyes.

"You're a weird one, doc."

His lips curled up in a smile. "I just really enjoy being alive."

* * *

On the very moment they stepped through the door, they were blinded by a light coming from above. Rigel did his best to protect his eyes with his arms, and next to him, Beleval cursed as Agmaer stumbled, tripped and leaned against her for balance.

"Does he really have to do this every single time?!" the elf muttered under her breath, then looked up to a dark skinned man who used concave mirrors to concentrate the full might of the midday sun on their faces. The heat was so intense, even that brief exposure was enough to make him sweat.

"No vampires here, Isran, for the love of Stendarr, point that thing away!"

"Can never be too careful," a deep, guttural voice replied.

The light was finally put off, and with that out of the way, the Dawnguard footmen dutifully dispersed through the castle. Beleval moved to the center of the large circular room while he and Agmaer waited back near the door. Soon he heard footsteps, and they were joined by the man who had all but fried them.

The redguard listened to the elf's reports with a frown on his face, occasionally interrupting to make short questions. Rigel knew they had become the topic when the elf pointed back at them with her thumb and Isran scrutinized them. His thick brows gave him a heavy, intimidating gaze. To his side, Agmaer suddenly fell silent, cleared his throat and shifted on his feet.

They had to wait another two minutes before they were finally called forward. By then the young Nord was visibly shaking. Rigel gave him a reassuring pat on the back as they made their way to the Dawnguard's leader.

"…They seem decent folk if you ask me," Beleval said. "The big quiet one is a medic, see? He's the one who patched me up."

Isran grunted and gestured with his chin. Rigel stepped forward and stared back at him, his lips pressed tightly together. They held one another's gaze, each sizing the other up. Isran's eyes stopped briefly at the sword on his hip and at the crossbow strapped on his back. He didn't comment on it, and Rigel offered no explanation.

"Got a name, kid?" The redguard finally spoke.

"Rigel. I'm Rigel..." he thought for a moment, then added "...sir."

Isran waved him off. "No need for formalities. You want to join the Dawnguard. Up for some vampire killing, are you?"

"No." he answered with complete seriousness. "I'm a pacifist. I rather stay out of killing, if at all possible."

Unlike Beleval, the man did not find any kind of humor in his statement. He had a feeling Isran was not the kind to smile or joke around much.

"Mmmhpf. Did some decent stitches though. We'll find something for you to do. And you!" The redguard turned to face Agmaer. "Another bloody pacifist?"

"Ah, um, no sir! I'm going to be a warrior, sir! Like my pa and my grampa before him, I got his axe - "

"You got any kind of training?" Isran interrupted.

Agmaer paled, stuttered for a moment, cleared his throat. Rigel caught his eye and shook his head slightly. The boy took a deep breath and started over.

"I haven't, sir, but I am able-bodied and willing to learn."

Rigel suppressed a grin. Isran deemed the answer satisfactory with a nod, then walked to some barrels on the edge of the room and picked up a crossbow and a bag of bolts. Then he tossed the equipment to the boy, whose reflexes were barely quick enough to catch them.

"My pa's axe," Isran repeated, then scoffed. "We'll make a Dawnguard out of you yet, kid."

"Yes, sir!"

"And out of you too…" The redguard shook his head "…pacifist. The things I have to deal with…"

"Yes, sir," Rigel replied with a smile.

* * *

His year of probation went by fast, and the training soon became routine. Agmaer and Rigel were joined by Hakar, their senior by a couple weeks. They would rise with the sun and go for a run around the perimeter. Then, they would have breakfast and spend the rest of the morning doing maintenance work - cleaning the gutters, replacing pipes, repainting the castle, reinforcing the defenses. They would have lunch, usually prepared by Durak, a wide-shouldered, cheery orc who worked as their crossbow instructor but also as an impromptu cook.

Their afternoon would be dedicated to practical lessons, which varied with the day of the week. They learned hand-to-hand combat and bladework, but also how to shoot with bows and crossbows, how to care for an armored troll and how to train dogs to pick up the trail of vampires. Then they would have dinner, followed by Rigel's favorite moment in the day: the reading of books by candlelight.

He loved it. He absorbed knowledge from the books like a sponge would soak up with water, as if he could make up for his lack of memories with raw information. He studied the history of the Dawnguard, how it had been created to watch over a Jarl's son, how it had grown from it and eventually disbanded, only to be restored two eras later. And of course, he studied their enemies: the vampires.

There were, he found out, over a hundred different strains of vampirism. All tales seemed to agree that it began from a single woman, Lamae, who was first defiled by the daedric Prince Molag Bal. She and all the Children of Coldharbour, those who got the purest form of vampirism directly from the Prince, were tainted by Noxiphilic sanguivoria. Noxiphilics were peculiar in that they were not harmed by sunlight but instead gained powers at night.

This breed, Rigel learned from the Dawnguard's archives, resisted precisely one generation before mutating into weaker strands. The half-bloods spawned from the Children of Coldharbour were easily distinguished by the slit that ran through their lips. They lacked the purebloods' complete resistance to sunlight; though they did not burn, they were considerably weaker by day.

Starting from the second generation, Noxiphilic sanguivoria would inexorably mutate to a weaker strain, most commonly Porphiric hemophilia andSanguinare vampiris. To which one it would change seemed to be strongly affected by the weather, the former widely present in warmer regions whilst the later was much more outspread in the cold climates of Skyrim. Of course, because it was a disease that was magical as well as biological, vampirism reacted different to each new host, so that different abilities emerged, usually lasting one to two generations and contributing to the formation of covens.

The vampire society had politics that were deeply intricate. Disputes usually lasted for hundreds of years, even thousand. In the Illac Bay, for instance, nine bloodlines competed for dominance, each with their own special skills. In Cyrodiil, on the other hand, a single clan ruled for so long, the tribe's name was lost to history. Skyrim too had a single dominant family, the Volkihar, the earliest coven known to Tamriel. They were said to live under the frozen waters of the Sea of Ghosts, from where they could reach through the ice without breaking it.

Because he was not a full member of the order yet, he had limited access to the libraries. Even so, he read for hours and hours nonstop. On the seventh day of the week, they could pick whichever training activity they desired, and that was the day Rigel used to deepen his knowledge in the arts of medicine. He was satisfied to find out he already knew a good amount, but even happier to discover how much there still was to learn.

Beyond herbs and anatomy, he also decided to get to know a bit of the arcane, and within six months, he could already correct most of minor wounds and even some infectious diseases solely with magic. When after little over a year Isran finally called the three of them to his quarters, he had quite a decent hold over the arts of Restoration.

It was tradition that after one year of training, the novice members were given an unaccompanied field mission. Once they returned from it, they went through a graduating ceremony, in which the order's leaders gave them the characteristic sun crests. That was also the moment Isran officially assigned their positions, though he usually let them know about that before they set off to the quest. On their first mission their main aim was solely survival; success was not required. Still, succeeding gave the members who were unhappy about their future jobs a chance to prove themselves and question the leader's choice.

"Do you think he'll let me be a warrior?" Agmaer babbled as they made their way upstairs. Rigel smirked despite himself. The boy had grown much calmer and confident over the year, yet he still got cold feet at the important moments.

"…mmh. I don't see why not. You're good with that axe, Agmaer."

Hakar, on the other hand, is probably not warrior material.

The other beamed. "You really think so? I trained hard, I hope he notices, oh Rigel, we really have to succeed on this mission –"

"I just want to be done with this already," Hakar muttered to their back. "I can't stand another day of throwing punches at dummies."

"Mm, I don't think we get excused from combat training after graduating," Rigel pointed out. "Isran does want every member on fighting shape."

Their conversation was cut short when they arrived at the leader's door. They briefly exchanged glances, then Agmaer took a step forward and knocked on the door three times. There was a sound of a chair being moved, followed by footsteps, and then the redguard opened the door and gestured with his head for them to enter.

"Well, well." Isran said, going back to his seat. "No need to dwell. You know why you're here."

Rigel closed the door behind them.

"It took a while but we finally have a graduating mission from the three of you." He continued. " I got word from Vigilant Tolan yesterday. There was an attack at their hall. He was the only survivor."

Isran paused, letting the implications of that sink in. "The Vigilants of Stendarr had been poking around in a cave before that happen. Place near Dawnstar – Dimhollow Crypt. I want you to find out what the vampires are doing there. Do not take unnecessary risks. Get in, get the information, get out. Am I understood?"

"Sir, yes, sir." Agmaer replied. Rigel nodded his consent.

"Well then, you know the traditions. You leave tomorrow by dawn. There's a mining settlement near the place. Tolan will be waiting for you there. Durak will get you equipped. Oh, one more thing. Rigel." he beckoned.

He stepped forward.

"Medic." Isran stated. Rigel nodded and took a step back. No surprises there.

"Agmaer…warrior."

"Yes! Yes!" The boy cheered, then remembered his surroundings and caught himself. "I mean, sir, thank you sir, I'm very grateful for this opportunity –"

"Fight half as much as you talk, boy, and I'll be glad." The redguard grunted. "And Hakar… unless you prove yourself, you'll be delivering letters and refilling the caches. Now get out of my sight, the three of you."

* * *

**Niar-Muse: Thank you so much for your review! I'm glad you like it. I'm writing this based on Skyrim with a lot of mods and I find the original dialogue lines a bit constraining. As for the hero not being the usual adventurer type, well, at first I expected him to be, but as I wrote I realized that for this story to work, he'd have to be the absolute gentlest soul possible, because the Serana I have in mind is...well, you'll see next chapter. And it just didn't work that he'd be The Good Guy™ while also being a fierce dragon-slaying, jack of all trades adventurer. People with his peaceful soul usually end up being doctors or nurses or social workers. So he's basically a rather unwilling NPC who gets pushed around!**


	5. Awakening

He should have known _something_ would go amiss when they first set foot off the Fort. They left at dawn, thought he only way they could know it was by guessing, because the horizon was completely covered by dark rainclouds. Beyond an indicative of terrible weather, it was also a bad omen – that the members of an order that relied so much on the sunlight would start a mission without it.

Another surge of bad luck took them on the third day of travel, when one of the horses slipped on ice and broke a leg. They had to sacrifice the animal and divide its load between the other two, which represented a considerable setback. They didn't have the coin to replace the horse, and Rigel estimated that this would cost them at least two more days of travel.

And then there was the fact that their group was hardly the most cohesive one. The air between them seemed to grow heavier with every step. Hakar was not willing to listen to Agmaer's small talk, and the constant snapping slowly undermined the young nord's morale. Rigel could tell they were cracking under the pressure of having to succeed this mission. He was aware Hakar had been given a choice between jail and serving the Holds through the Dawnguard, though for which crime, he did not know.

He had a hard time trying to smooth things out. He could sense the two were scared; Agmaer was still completely green in the battlefield and Hakar's reluctance was clearer the closer to danger they got. Yet he lacked the raw charisma to be the strong leader figure they needed, and the constant arguments drained him badly.

He began to worry about their survival. They didn't have a plan, they didn't have one another's backs and after nine days, when they finally reached the mining settlement, they learned they wouldn't have the support from Vigilant Tolan either.

"The fuck do you mean, he left a couple hours ago?" Hakar slammed his fist on the bar table. Rigel involuntarily winced.

The miner they'd been talking to didn't take kindly to the insults. "I meant what I said. You daft? Your guy is fucking gone!"

"I'm sick of this," the other answered. "Fucking sick of this. This fucking mission was doomed from the start. Vampires took down the entire Vigilant Hall and they expect us to deal with this? I rather go arrested again than serve this death sentence."

His outburst was punctuated by his slamming the door shut behind them as he left. Rigel pinched the bridge of his nose and sighed, then turned to the miner.

"I'm sorry for my companion's behavior," he said. "Forgive us, please. It has been a rough week."

"What fuckin' ever," the miner slurred, sipping a mug of mead.

"If you have any information that could be of help, maybe the direction Vigilant Tolan was headed…"

"Don't know, don't care."

Rigel took a deep breath, accepted that any further attempts at communication would be fruitless and stepped away from the patron's table and back to Agmaer at the entrance. They exited the inn together, only to find one horse and half their equipment was missing. He rubbed his temples, thinking, considering his options, then exhaled loudly.

"Well," he began, calling his partner's attention. "Agmaer...I'll need you to grab the horse and go after Hakar. See if you can find Tolan on the way. They probably headed to Dawnstar, not many places to go around here."

"What? Why me?" the other protested. "What about you?"

"If Hakar wants to ditch, that's his business, but we need that horse and equipment, and you'll be faster if you go alone," he reasoned. "I'll go on ahead to Dimhollow…. pick up Tolan's trail, maybe."

"I don't know," Agmaer insisted.

Rigel put a reassuring hand on his shoulder. "It's the best we can do. You're a great warrior, Agmaer, I mean that, but I'm… I'm the only one who has fought vampires before. I'll try to stay out of sight, but if it comes to worst, well… I think I have the best chance."

Agmaer ran his hand through his long blonde locks and sighed. "You make a strong case. All right, I'll go get that son of a bitch. And, Rigel? He was right about the risks. They _did _wipe out the Vigilants. Be careful."

He answered with an encouraging thumbs up. "Hopefully you'll be quick enough that we go in together. I'll meet you there."

* * *

Agmaer wasn't quick enough.

Rigel was alone when he first noticed the stone protruding from the ice, forming the crude steps which led to Dimhollow. He could see the spot meters away from it, because the bright red blood slowly dripping down contrasted sharply with the gray sludge. He involuntarily grimaced at the metallic scent that assaulted his nose when he finally reached the slick steps.

He found the source of the trail a little bit further up on the mountain, where a severed head laid on a spike, its tongue hanging off, glassy eyes still open. He quietly cursed when he recognized the disfigured face as Vigilant Tolan, then moved closer in a mix of morbid curiosity and caution. He couldn't tell if the cause of death had been the fracture on the vertebras or the severing of the throat arteries, yet he hoped for the former, less painful option.

He touched the pale skin. Frost had already deposited over the hair and was creeping down the face. Rigel applied pressure with his fingers, slowly tracing them over the jaw, cheekbone and whatever was left of the neck. He tapped the cheek, then the temple, then carefully forced the mouth fully open.

_What am I doing?_

He gritted his teeth and stuck two fingers inside the head's mouth and down its throat as deep as he could, then pulled them out with a squelch. The blood on his hands was warm to the touch. He took a long breath, letting the information he knew mix up with whatever things prowled his subconscious.

_Rigor mortis has settled in on the small face and neck muscles, but not on the large jaw ones. There are no flies, but that is to be expected in this weather. Insides still not at ambient temperature. Estimated time of death: between two and five hours ago._

He pulled the eyelids down, revealing a reddish brown line across the white of the eyeball.

_Tache noir of the sclera means he died with his eyes open._

Rigel winced at the thought and gently pushed the eyes closed, wiped his hands on his pants and covered the head with his cape, then muttered a quick prayer for the Vigilant's soul. He hesitated again at the mouth of the cave, trying to think of a plan. It was strange that there weren't any guards. If Tolan had been dead for so long, whichever vampire who had killed him was bound to be long done with his meal and back at his post.

The insides of the cavern were impenetrably dark, but this time he was prepared. He fished a Night Eye potion from his rucksack and drunk it down with three long gulps, then spat out at the bitter taste. His head exploded in pain, as if someone had driven nails through his eyes, and he covered them with his palms, resisting the urge to puke.

He leaned back against the mouth of the cave and ever so slowly opened his eyelids, tears running down his cheeks. For a moment everything was in the wrong color, then his vision blurred and refocused, and the world grew a sharper edge. He stared at the darkness and where there had previously been nothing, he could now see clear outlines of stones and ground irregularities.

He crept in, crossbow in hands, ever so slowly. He was tensed and ready to shoot, but each step revealed no opponents and it got under his skin. He even came across a bonfire, its cinders still fuming, the glow of the embers too bright for his sensitive eyes. For a long while, all he could hear were the echoes of a waterfall inside the cave. He tried his best not to wet his boots but it was no use; more than once he was forced to cross large puddles and creeks, and though he constantly stopped to cast minor healing spells that warmed him up, it truly worried him that his toes would freeze off.

He began to find vestiges of battle. Here, mutilated remains of draugrs thrown left and right. There, a giant frostbite spider, its insides spilled over the ground, still fresh. The stench of decaying flesh grew almost overwhelming the further he proceeded. His clothes were covered in sticky spider web, his eyes burned and he kept trembling from the cold. More than once, he considered turning back. What kept him was the perspective of having to re-do the entire trajectory with a loud, not quite so sneaky Agmaer on his tail.

He eventually found out where all the vampires had gone. He reached a balcony decorated by oppressive gargoyles and quickly ducked behind a pillar when he heard voices coming from below.

"…very careful when she wakes. You know how she is. We'll have to contain her as fast as we can… move that pillar over there, yes, like that."

He laid belly down on the cold stone floor, pulled his dark hood over his head and poked his head between the rails to take a peek. He could count at least three hounds and six vampires moving back and forth while a seventh stood on the center of the arches.

He crawled a bit ahead to get a closer look. The vampires' features were distorted, cheekbones high, noses curved and batlike. What caught his eyes the most however were the vertically split lips that marked a very specific brand of vampirism. When it came down to power, Noxiphilic half-bloods were quite literally the second most powerful kind of vampire around.

An impaled body had been placed on a pillar, and the blood flowed down deep grooves, giving off a purplish glow as soon as it touched the ground. The glow spread over the ground, reaching braziers of blue fire that the creatures dragged around.

From above, he could see the solution to the puzzle quite clearly, but the vampires seemed to be struggling with it. The one in the middle, clearly in charge, shouted orders with increasing levels of annoyance, until finally all the braziers were lit and the purple fog rose from the floor up to their knees. Then the ground shook, and the stake in which the impaled man rested slowly crawled up and up, revealing a stone monolith.

"This is it, form a circle!" The boss commanded. "Here she comes, no matter what happens, stay alert and don't –"

The stone groaned when the tip of the spike touched the roof, yet the pillar kept rising, until the sharp end broke and the limp body was pushed up. The vampire in charge took two steps back to avoid the shower of crushed body parts that came down when the body was pressed against the ceiling, and Rigel gritted his teeth at the sickening sound of bones breaking apart.

And then the ground stopped trembling, and a single high pitched sound of metal against metal sounded when the obelisk slowly slid open, revealing the shape of a woman. Rigel held his breath.

Her face lacked the deformities of the ones surrounding her, and was in fact inhumanly beautiful. Her figure was mesmerizing, and he couldn't help but stare. He took in the black hair, pulled back partially in a braid that crowned her head. The metal choker seemed out of place in her delicate neck, of which very little skin showed, since her dark locks were long enough to reach her shoulder. Her right ear was pierced by three decorative spikes. Her high cheekbones, the full lips from which a single drop of blood rolled down to her chin, the long eyelashes, unblemished skin and the expression of absolute peace –

_Snap out of it!_

Rigel forced himself to look away, his mind fuzzy, his heart racing. He took his hand to his mouth and bit, knowing that the pain would make his thoughts clearer. He forced himself to observe then, focusing not on her but on the other vampires, and that she had this strong of an aura was more than enough to justify the generalized panic that went below him.

The woman tumbled limp from the monolith, and was immediately caught by the vampire in charge. In synch, two others stepped closer, each grabbing and holding one of her arms, immobilizing her. These two were tall, bestial even, and their grip lifted her off the ground so the tips of her boot barely touched the cold stone. The three remaining vampires drew their blades, the high pitched rasp of metal echoing over the cave walls.

There was a moment of absolute silence followed by an audible gasp, and then her eyes lazily slid open and Rigel could see they were bright crimson. She didn't speak at all, just tilted her head innocently, pulling her lips in a half smile, looking absolutely serene. She raised her head, which had been hanging, lifted her chin and blew her bangs off her eyes absentmindedly.

"Lady Serana," the vampire in charge began while he backed, putting distance between him and her.

No answer. She tilted her head to the other side and rested her eyes on the vampire, the smile disturbingly frozen on her face, her brows furrowing as if she didn't quite speak that language. Rigel's hands moved subconsciously to his crossbow, and he brought the weapon closer to him.

"Now, I recommend you offer no resistance and please accompany us –"

"Ha," she vocalized, then started laughing.

Rigel was not ready. The sound of her voice hit him like lightning, all his muscles tensing at the same time. He snapped his eyes shut and pulled his head back, gritting his teeth, clenching his fingers hard against his crossbow and fighting an unexpected wave of raw desire. Her laughter was musical and just so _alluring _that even while every hair on his body stood on end, he still felt the heat return to his extremities, particularly his burning cheeks.

_Talos have mercy –_

She stopped just as abruptly as she had started, grinning, her eyes gone from unfocused to vicious, and though his mind was still fuzzy, he could see clearly the glint of long, sharp canines. He was unable to follow with precision her movements when she twitched, extending her neck, twisting her body. He did see when she spat out blood and the vampire holding her left arm slumped down to the ground, throat torn open. Her hand, now free, struck again, and the neck of the second creature that held her met a similar end, ripped apart by her sharp nails.

She wiped her lips with her thumb and flexed her wrists as if testing them, the eerie smile and empty look returning to her face. She murmured something inaudible. The vampire leader backpedaled and drew his blade.

"Don't be a fool," he warned. "We have you, and this cave, surrounded. We outnumber you –"

"Lokil," she all but whispered, her smooth voice like liquid to his ears. "It is always such a pleasure. Remember when you tried to kill me twice?"

The vampire opened his mouth, but no words came out of it. Serana grabbed without looking at a dagger on her belt and drew it, her movements stiff. She held the blade between her thumb and forefinger and dropped it, tilting her head at the clattering sound it made when it fell, her eyes following the object sluggishly.

"Lady Serana –" Lokil began.

"Mmm." She raised her head and faced him again, as if only just noticing his presence.

And then, in an instant, her figure turned into a blur that reappeared millimeters from the vampire's face. She locked eyes with him, placed a hand on his shoulder and tentatively dragged it over to his nape, the other stroking his cheek, and still that _smile –_

There was a loud crack and suddenly Lokil's neck was turned in a position that no neck should ever be, and her fingers were flexed into claws, and he heard a –

_R-i-i-i-i-i-p_

\- and off went the head, rolling down the stone floor.

The three remaining vampires hesitated and he wondered why, until he realized they were scared, of course they were, Rigel himself was absolutely terrified –

The vampires attacked, but it was hopeless. She moved too fast for their blades, dodging them with such ease, it could be said she was dancing rather than fighting – if it could even be called a fight at all. She materialized behind the first and the second and twisted their necks with mechanical precision and a vague look of disinterest.

The third one dropped his weapon and lifted his open palms in surrender. She halted mid-movement a few steps away from him, a single eyebrow arched, and made a dismissive gesture with her hand. The vampire's eyes widened.

"Thank you," he babbled as he stumbled and ran, "Thank you, you won't see me again –"

She stood still, watching him go. When he'd gotten far enough that Rigel could barely see him, she moved again, picking up the dagger from where she'd dropped it and throwing it. The weapon whizzed in the air and into the darkness for a moment, then he heard a muted _thump_ and a scream.

The corners of Serana's mouth twitched, and then she froze and crossed her arms over her chest, hugging herself. She crouched and Rigel saw her lips move and heard sounds, though he could not distinguish any words. She stood like that for a minute, then two, more than enough time for him to get his mind back together and think about his situation.

He had no hopes of beating her in combat and no illusions about that. His best chance, he figured, was to crawl back from the hole he came from, hoping to go unnoticed. And yet, and yet – there she was, bizarrely doing nothing in particular, within range of his crossbow, and should he not do his best to stop such creature from being set loose in this world, even if it cost him his life? Was that not ultimately what his membership in the Dawnguard was about?

_I am brave_, he thought to himself not for the first time, and even though he knew there was a thin line between brave and stupid, he felt like he had to try.

Rigel got to his feet and pressed his back against the pillar, taking occasional peeks below, waiting for an opportunity. He tried to keep his breathing even but his heart thudded so hard, he wondered if she could possibly hear him from below. Maybe she knew he was there. Perhaps she was toying with him. He counted from one to a hundred and back to one, trying to keep his cool.

The muttering stopped, and he turned to look. He saw his chance come when she finally stood up, and for a moment she gave her back to him. He stepped out of his hiding spot and took aim –

She turned.

For a moment, their eyes met, even though he felt she looked not at but _through_ him. The next second, he could see surprise cross her face, and he hesitated then because in contrast to her frozen smile, her fear seemed so genuine and so very human.

He hadn't expected that. It was his first encounter with a pure-blood vampire, and he hadn't expected it at all – that they'd be less and not more bestial than their wilder counterparts. It might be the lack of a split lip and a bat nose, it might be how peaceful she looked before she woke, it might even be her powerful aura getting to him again, but hesitate he did, knowing it would be fatal.

One fraction of second of indecision, yet that was enough. He was a healer, not a killer, and he learned in that second that he would be unable to take her life for as long as he believed there was something human in her. Against all logic and good sense, he lowered his crossbow.

The astonishment washed off her face in exchange for scorn, and she scoffed. He did not expect her to spare him, not after what he'd seen her do, and yet the snap of his throat did not come. There were no words, just that exchange of looks, and then she dissolved into darkness, taking the shape of a cloud of bats that flew away.

Rigel let go of his weapon first, and of himself next, and he dropped to his knees and closed his eyes and prayed. He thanked the gods for sparing his soul, and prayed they'd also spare hers.


	6. Before the Storm

He wasn't sure how long it took him to finally stand, but his knees were stiff from the cold and from staying still for so long. He went down the staircase, looking for something, anything that could be of use for the Dawnguard. Yet between splashing in the blood and parts of men and vampire both, he couldn't stomach staying at the area for too long. Exhaustion began to take its toll on him, his limbs heavy and his mind just as weary.

"Serana," he muttered to himself as he combed over the place, tasting the name on the tip of his tongue. He repeated it three more times for good measure.

He didn't know why she'd been put to sleep, for how long or how exactly she'd been awakened. He made himself walk over to the obelisk where he'd first seen the woman, but the bare stone walls told him no secrets even when he ran his fingers over the cold edges. He sighed. He reluctantly went over the bodies of each of the mutilated vampires, hoping against hope that he would find some sort of written orientations, something, anything that would help him make sense of things, but of course he found no such clues.

They were at Dimhollow for her, that much was clear, and from their cautious behavior, Rigel could tell they had been aware of what a wild card she would turn out to be. He made his way out of the central area and started looking for the exit. Since he hadn't crossed Serana's path again, he figured there must be a way out other than the one he came in from. Granted, she did turn into bats which could conveniently fly, but he knew for a fact that most if not all Nord tombs had backdoor.

He eventually found what he was looking for in the shape of a side corridor that steeply led him upwards. It ended on a large circular room, ancient stone thrones at the edges of what looked like an arena. There had been powerful draugrs guarding that chamber, of which only scattered limbs remained. Whether they had been recently beaten or actually dead for centuries, he did not know and did not care to find out, his eyes already scanning the room for the exit.

And then he stopped when something else entirely caught his attention. Across the room, in an arch, mysterious words had been scratched upon stone, and though he did not remember his past, both his instinct and his general knowledge of the world told him those walls were not at all uncommon. No, the unusual part was that one of them seemed to pop to his eyes, almost glittering. He took a couple steps in that direction, curious yet cautious, and confirmed without a shadow of doubt that one specific clutter of scrawls was indeed glowing.

The closer he got, the brighter the light seemed to grow, and as he approached, he began to hear whispering. Even though the sound was louder with every step, he couldn't distinguish any familiar words. Curiosity speaking louder than good sense, he closed the final distance between himself and the wall, brushing the tips of his fingers against the glowing stone –

And recoiled as if hit, the corners of his vision darkening, the voices gone from whispers to roars in a split second. The light coming from the word reshaped itself into tendrils that reached towards him, and he could feel the energy flow _in_ from the point where his skin had made contact with the runes, up the whole length of his finger and then his palm, burning, crawling up his arm as if alive. He leaned against the wall, clamping his shoulder, trying to stop whatever it was from following its course into his system, from his armpit to under his collarbone to his chest to his heart –

He would have screamed but the following heartbeat sent the invading energy into his lungs and all he could produce was a strangled wheeze. He let himself slide down the stone and over the floor, hitting the ground hard. The light had stopped flowing from the wall and he could do nothing but watch as the last few tendrils breached his body and disappeared under his skin, and then it was back at his heart and Rigel gritted his teeth, closed his eyes and waited for the inevitable.

His heart contracted once more, pumping the alien sensation into every inch of his body, from chest down his torso to leg and toe. He gasped, his vision blurred.

_Most substances are unable to cross into the brain_, he thought incoherently, even though he felt whatever violated him was immaterial.

It was the last thing to cross his mind before blacking out.

* * *

" – alive! I thought you were a goner, what in Oblivion went on back there?! I just crossed a complete massacre! Did… did you do that? Did you take on all those vampires?"

"Hnng," Rigel grunted, shielding his barely open eyes with his outstretched palm.

"Here," large hands reached down and helped him sit up, then offered him a flask of water. It made him notice his mouth was dry, and he accepted the drink wordlessly. Agmaer was crouched next to him, fidgeting in place while he waited, but Hakar was nowhere to be found. His companion understood the silent question made with his eyes.

"I couldn't find him, the bastard," Agmaer explained. "I chased him almost all the way back to Dawnstar, then lost his trail on a snowstorm."

Rigel rubbed his eyes, then stared at his hand. It was red and swollen, charred where the fingertips had made contact with the stone. On closer inspection, he could see the beginnings of a blister forming. He pressed his fingers against the opposite palm and muttered a quick healing spell, wincing when the skin stretched.

"I got knocked out… some kind of magical trap," he mumbled, frowning. He squinted at the wall, but whatever magic had hit him was gone. He dusted himself and stood, his ears still ringing. "It doesn't matter. I know what the vampires were after."

Agmaer's eyes brightened. "You do? Then the mission wasn't a total failure after all!"

He wasn't so sure about that, but he didn't have the heart to burst his partner's bubble, so he merely grunted in response.

"Well? Don't leave me hanging!"

He ran his fingers through his hair. He had let it grown over the past year, though he had it cut long on top and short on the sides.

"It's a bit of a long story…"

* * *

"…she took them out, all of them, by herself, with her bare hands. It was insane." He finished retelling the story for what felt like the thousandth time.

In front of him, Isran put down his mug. It was filled with coffee – the Dawnguard leader wouldn't drink anything that muddled his senses. Rigel had no such qualms and had been itching for a hot bath and a drink from the moment he arrived.

"And what of Hakar?"

"Gone. I couldn't find him, sir," Agmaer replied. "I lost his trail and decided to go back for Rigel instead."

The dark skinned man rose from his seat and gave his back to them, shuffling through a shelf. "It is grave news you bring me. A daughter of Coldharbour… not many of those. And in Skyrim, only two possibilities." He stopped, pulled a leather-bound book and flipped through the pages, stopping at one. He tossed the book on top of the table.

"Serana. Valerica. Which one was it?"

Rigel leaned forward to look, even though he already knew the answer. The drawing of Serana was a good likeness, though it seemed flat next to the effect the woman had in person. The other picture was of an older woman – Valerica, he presumed. He could tell they were somehow related, though even in red ink, Valerica's gaze was much softer.

"Serana. One of the half-bloods said so."

Isran flipped the book shut with a single hand and sighed. "I feared so." He rubbed his hand over his face, tense. "We'll need double the vigilance… intensify the trainings… it's no good, she's no good at all."

"Sir," Rigel interrupted. "Now that the mission is over, may we assume our designed posts?"

The leader focused his gaze back at them. "Of course. Agmaer, there are some people I want you to look for. Old friends that might be of help now. Come back tomorrow for a briefing and instructions on where to find them. Rigel, you can do… whatever medics do when they're not patching people up. You'd know that better than I."

He cleared his throat. "If you don't mind, sir, and if you could spare the resources, I'd like to take up research."

"Research?" Isran echoed.

"Research…on vampirism. Their weaknesses, their strengths… perhaps even a cure, sir."

The man scoffed. "Ambitious, aren't we? No, I do not in fact have resources to spare, so you better make this investment count. Talk to Durak about getting…whatever you need." He paused for a moment. "It's a wonder you escaped alive at all."

It sounded more like a question than an affirmative, and Rigel felt pressed to answer. He hesitated.

"She…didn't see me, sir. She made quick work of the vampires, and then she was gone in a hush." He pressed his lips in a thin line, then added, "I would have been dead for sure had she seen me, but I think… she just wasn't looking. Perhaps she had much on her mind."

Isran narrowed his eyes. "I see…" He waited, as if expecting Rigel to say something more, but was met with silence. He sighed and flicked his hand off. "Get out of my sight, the two of you. You have given me much to think about."

* * *

"Wake up."

_I'm already awake_, she thought impatiently, stirring in bed.

"Wake up."

_I could have used those wake up calls on the last two hundred years or so._

"wakeupwakeupwakeupwakeup –"

"Gods fucking damn it," she hissed, slamming her palms on the mattress and sitting up roughly. "What do you want?!"

"She sits up."

No shit.

Serana covered her face with her palms, sucked in a deep breath and let it out ever so slowly, focusing with all her might on the cool air moving in and out of her lungs.

"She sighs."

Her eyelid twitched involuntarily, and she bunched the blankets on her hands, opening and closing her fists reflexively. It couldn't be much past midday. And although she had slept for the last two centuries or so, and even despite how little sleep vampires needed, she'd spent the last three days on a nonstop path to her home-sweet-castle, and she felt she'd earned that rest.

_If only._

She plopped down in bed, letting herself sink in the soft cushion. Stared at the roof, the sharp corners of the cut stone; laid down on one side, then the other, then belly up again. Flipped her pillow so the warm side would face down. Pulled the covers closer so that her feet would be the same temperature as the rest of her body.

"She tosses and turns, tosses and turns."

_Can't you please go away?_ She all but begged for the billionth time.

"Do-de-da-de-do," the Voice sung back, ignoring her as usual.

She covered her head with the pillow, opened her mouth and yelled.

"Aaaaaaaaaaaah!"

"Aaaaaaaaaaaah!" The voice yelled back at her.

She grabbed the pillow with both her hands and threw it against the opposite wall. It bounced back and flopped down in bed, near her feet. She pulled the blankets over her head and closed her eyes, waiting for the air to grow too warm to breathe. It never did, of course, she was cold and _dead_, and after ten excruciating minutes, she pulled her head out of her blanket-cave, closed her eyes and began counting little bats flying out the window.

"One little bat. Two little bats. Time, wasting. Wasting time."

_Three little bats, four little bats._

"Five little bats, six little bats. Father. Figure out. Prophecy. Heart. Scroll."

_Seven little bats, eight little bats,_

"Do something about that. Soon. Sleep when you're dead – oh, wait."

_NINE FUCKING LITTLE –_

"Ten little bats."

She opened her eyes. The midday sunshine seeped through the window, making her wince. How long had she been trying to catch some sleep? How long did she have until she had to get up? She made mental calculations. She didn't properly have any appointments, but she couldn't very well lie there forever. Her shoulder muscles felt tense, and she made a deliberate effort to relax them. She repeated the process with her facial musculature.

"Mother. Missing. Father. Psychotic."

_Yes, he is. And what am I?_

"Kill-kill-kill-kill yoooou –"

_Some sleep,_ she pleaded._ I probably need twelve hours but right now I'd take even two._

Two hours sleep would probably make her_ more_ tired when she woke up, not less, but right then she was too exhausted to care for any kind of logics.

"Failure. Failure. You'll fail. You can't do it. Failure."

_What are you even talking about?_

"Give up. Can't do it. Failure. You're not capable."

_I just need some rest –_

"Spare us. Give up. Disaster. Disappointment."

_"Fine!"_ she snarled, sitting back up.

Resigned, she extended her legs and bent forwards, reaching with her hands all the way down to her toetips, stretching.

"Don't get out of bed."

She bent her left arm and pulled on her elbow with the right hand, then switched sides and repeated the movement.

"Don't get out of bed! Don't get out of bed! Failure. Failure. All that awaits you is failure."

She flexed her neck laterally until her ear touched her shoulder, once to the left, twice, once to the right, twice. She moved her wrists in circles.

"dontgetupdontgetupdontgetup why do you even try? Save yourself the trouble, give up now – "

She turned sideways, the tips of her feet touching the ground.

"DON'T –"

Serana got out of bed.

"AAAAAAAAHHHHHH! STUPID! STUPID STUPID STUPID –"

_Have mercy_, she mentally whined.

Serana crossed the room and stopped in front of her dresser, over which a mirror hung. She met her own gaze on the polished surface, her braids undone, deep rings under tormented eyes, her clothes crumpled and unkempt. The sunlight touching her cheek burned just enough to be unpleasant. She brushed her hand against the rays of clarity, touched a stray lock of hair, caught it between her index and middle finger, stared mesmerized at the image of herself holding it, how the light bounced off the dark strands –

She blinked, and her likeness was gone, together with the window, which had been replaced by a large painting. All the color in the room was made gray by darkness. In the mirror, only her empty, unmade bed, the pillow still where she'd thrown it.

_Of course._

Vampires had no reflections, no dark rings, and however exhausted she was, it never really showed.

"The bread and the bed and the dead and the sled and the head and the shed and the red –"

She put both hands down on the dresser and sighed, eyes closed, counting from one to ten and back to one before giving her back to the mirror and turning to make her bed. Folding, tidying – the repetitive movements did her good. She lit up the lamps on the room up with a flick of her wrist. Serana could see just fine in the dark, thank you very much, yet force of habit had her keeping ambiance light anyway.

"She tries to put her thoughts back in track."

_And you're not helping._

She looked over her shoulder, made sure she was alone, then pushed her bed slightly aside and pulled on a loose brick previously hidden by the headboard. She took a peek in, and there it was – the Elder Scroll. Hiding it was a formality, of course – she had no illusions that her father, the master of this castle, didn't know where she put her trinkets, especially because – because –

"Because everyone can hear your thoughts," the Voice finished.

_That's ridiculous,_ she told herself, yet that was how it felt.

Gritting her teeth, she replaced the brick and the bed, content that the scroll was untouched - for now.

"Hello. Hello. Hello, it's me. Hello."

"Gods, but aren't you unbearable today," she muttered, rubbing the sleepiness of her eyes.

Giving up on any attempts of peace altogether, she made her way out of her room, turning the key twice as she left. The lock, too, was a formality – the true protection of her bedroom was on the years of piled-up trap spells she'd been placing ever since she could cast her first rune. Still, rituals, routines – those little things helped her keep the world standing.

She put the key on her left pocket as usual and made her way downstairs, going past the dining room on her way. The familiar mahogany table from Valenwood was still there, she noted. The polished piece of furniture was probably as old as she was. Some members of the court sat on the velvet chairs around it, but she didn't dignify any of them with a greeting and they knew better than to talk to her when not talked to.

"Plotting. Scheming. Looking at you looking at you lookingatyouatyouatyou TRAITORS! Traitors. Backstabbers. All of them, all of them. Kill you kill you killyoukillyoukillyou –" the Voice whispered, and for once she had no objections.

Two hundred years of her and Valerica's absence and Harkon's monopoly had turned the Volkihar court into his; save for Garan, Vingalmo and Orthjolf, all the members of the castle were newcomers she did not recognize, and she was actually surprised the latter two had lasted so long without killing one another. It didn't bother her much – politics was what she did, and politics was what she would do. The loyalties of the court were an issue that would be addressed in due time – of which she had plenty.

Right then though, it was rest she needed, rest which her omnipresent companion kept denying her. That too was soon to be fixed.

"She makes her way through the castle."

Serana walked almost robotically over immaculate stone flooring and past beautiful tapestries that hung where one would usually expect a window, her boots clapping rhythmically against the ground, the Voice babbling nonstop in her head. Her body felt stiff and unresponsive from fatigue.

The castle was stunningly well kept, something which she'd credit Garan for – her father was far too lost in his paranoia to pay attention to such trifle things as aesthetics, but the Dunmer vampire had always been meticulous. She paused for a second to take a longer look at one of the pictures hanging in the wall – a painting of a giant, dark anchor that was bound by chains to an oblivion gate above. From the portal, the purplish shades of Coldharbour seemed to seep down.

"She stops to give the ornament some thought, unsure whether it suits her tastes," the Voice interjected.

She didn't suppress a smile. The decoration lacked her mother's warmth, but there was a definite sense of style there, one she knew was not her father's.

Reading such little details had been vital to her past of political success – as much as her coercive skills, she gathered. The castle, the décor, those were almost living things that told her a story of her father's gradual but definite loss of power that went hand in hand with his mental degradation. She wasn't sure yet just how far went Harkon's delusions, but the very fact that the logistics of the castle was run by someone else told her that they were nearing a coup.

She could tell, too, that her return had bothered those vying for the head of the house, most notably Orthjolf and Vingalmo, who were so far into their own power dispute for the inheritance of a clan_ not theirs_, they weren't even being subtle about it. Those two would have to be put in their places, but all in due time.

_All in due time_, she repeated to herself over and over like a mantra, reaching for the cellar door. First things first, her rest._ Sleep._

"She opens the door to the dark depths below."

The wooden floor of the lower level creaked under her weight as she climbed down the stairs. There, organized in shelves neatly arranged over the walls, were lines and lines of bottles, neatly grouped together in categories, labeled and sorted by color. She absently ran her finger over the bottle's necks, the ambient temperature glass feeling cold even to her touch.

"Blood and wine and god and vine and flood confine –"

She tilted her head at the comment, letting her hand linger over a flask. The Voice wasn't too far off; to her more than most, blood was less of a need and more of a luxury. She didn't need it to live, but it enhanced her powers, healed her wounds, and most importantly, she got drunk off it. Children of Coldharbour were notoriously blood-independent, though the same didn't quite apply to half-bloods, and it was always amusing – and often used as a means of torture – to watch them compete which could stay the longest off it, as if it marked some sort of increased purity.

Serana had been face to face with Molag Bal himself and that excused her of any such needs of proving herself. She pulled a bottle, scanned the label, squinting to make out the words, her sight blurry from exhaustion. She scowled and put it back. Each blood harvested was different, affected by the source's mood, age, gender… still touching the bottle tips, she moved further back the cellar. Arousal, anger, sadness, all that caused subtle yet perceptible changes in flavor.

"She searches for a drink of her taste, tuning off the distant, high pitched screams."

The Volkihar had their own…production, and her father always did like the taste of terror. Serana found his preferences rather crude, and because she'd been gone for so long, it took her a while of searching to find something truly exquisite. When she did though, it was very much worth her time, and she grinned with satisfaction when she spotted an aged bottle of her favorite.

She blew the dust off it and removed the cork.

Her fangs reflexively jumped out at the scent of blood, and she made a conscious movement to slide them back in, mildly irritated. She was not a _savage_, damn it. She eyed the lid for a good three seconds, the Voice gone silent at last. She made circles with her hand, watching the liquid twist and turn inside the flask.

_Are you quite sure about this? It's not so bad today. Annoying, sure, but at least it's not aggressive._

"The sea and the pea and the tea and the tree and the pee and the bee and the ski –"

Serana downed half the bottle's contents with three long gulps. It went down pleasantly cold against her throat, the sweetness of it assaulting her senses. The effect was immediate, and she swayed on her feet, feeling giddy. She finished her drink and placed the empty recipient on top of the shelf, so that whoever was in charge of the cellar would get to know her tastes. Then she reached for another bottle, something with a little more kick to it.

The weariness that clung to her very bones seemed to dissipate with every swig. Blood would usually enhance a vampire's senses, not numb them, but they had special mixes designed to mimic the blissful "getting completely wasted" effect. Serana knew what to drink for that purpose. The tastes were pungent and thick, but once she'd already opened her appetite with something of quality, the blood of skooma-addicts mixed with stamina potions and whichever else went in was easier to keep down.

The Voice protested, of course it did, weakly at first, more severely with every consecutive mouthful, but by the time it reached a scream, Serana was far too inebriated to give a damn. Leaning against the wall for support, she let herself slide down, laughing hysterically all the way, letting the third or fourth bottle slip from her hands.

_Finally,_ she thought with satisfaction when the edges of her vision began to darken.

She closed her eyes, feeling the world spin, still chuckling despite herself. The pain didn't quite register when her shoulder hit the ground, but she vaguely remembered thinking it should have.

* * *

RavenOfTheWinds: thank you very much for your review! I'm glad you enjoy it!


	7. Dragon Rising

**Warning: heavy cursing and mature content. If you're easily triggered, right about now is a good time to stop reading.**

* * *

The headache that woke Serana was a force to be reckoned with.

_Daedra and divines have mercy,_ she thought, shielding her eyes with her hand. She dropped it a second later – there wasn't really any light source to be blocked in the cellar. Her left shoulder sent pulses of pain that irradiated to her arm. Her head throbbed. Her tongue felt dry and thick on her mouth. Her throat itched for a drink, but one look at the bottles around her was enough to make her stomach turn.

_Why don't we keep water in the cellar? _The vampire ruminated with annoyance, pushing herself to a sitting position, cursing when a wooden splinter lodged itself between her fingers. She choked with something between a belch and a hiccup. Her esophagus burned with reflux. She placed her hand over her sternum and rubbed slow circles –

_Thump-thump._

Serana froze. Slowly, her fingers trembling, she moved her palm slightly to the left, and sure enough, there it was, so close she could feel it under her skin –

_Thump-thump._

She closed her eyes and took one long, deep breath. Her extremities felt a few degrees too cold.

_Oh gods please, not this again._

_Thump-thump_, her heart replied, and she pulled her hand away, distress squeezing at her insides, the nausea returning tenfold.

_"Worthless,"_ the Voice whispered in her ear, yet the tone was different from the irksome blabber from before. This was more of a prolonged hiss, cruel and deliberate. Her breath hitched and she gritted her teeth. Her heart reacted to the jeer, picking up its pace, and the feeling was at the same time so familiar and so foreign she almost retched.

"_Stupid. Monster._"

A wave of anguish crossed Serana's spine, and she shivered. She hugged her knees and rested her chin on top of them, digging each finger hard on the opposite forearm, counting odd numbers out loud. It was hard to stop herself from hyperventilating. She could see her short breaths condensing when she exhaled, and whichever part of her was still attached to reality reminded her that she produced no body heat and that made no sense.

"Coming to get you. Coming to get you. Coming to get you they're coming to getyoutogetyoutogetyou –"

_"Worthless. Failure. Beast."_

The voices overlapped, yet she could somehow still understand each of them perfectly. She covered her ears with her palms, her nails leaving gashes on her scalp, her fingers pressing tight against her sharp piercings until the skin broke.

She knew it was pointless.

_"Pointless, pointless,"_ the Voice echoed.

"Your heart is theirs. Your body is theirs. Theirstheirstheirs coming for you they're coming for you comingcomingcoming –"

"Goway" she mustered, and even that single slurred word took from her way more energy than she could spare. Her heart beat and it beat and it_ beat –_

Something brushed against her nape. Gasping, she straightened her spine and backed against a wall, eyes darting around the room.

Nothing.

"They're here. Here here here hereherehereHERE –"

She clenched her hands into fists, trying and failing to keep the whole room under her stare. On the far back, near the cellar door, something moved. Something lurked_._ Her pulse roared in her ears, loud enough to drown her thoughts, not loud enough to silence the Voices.

Movement. Too fast for her eyes to keep up. Here, now there – her hand darted to the side and she pulled free one of the nearby bottles, clutching it dangerously tight. _Thump-thump _went her heart, faster and faster until she felt she would burst from inside; on the corner of her vision, _they_ moved and crawled and crept.

She wanted to scream, yet she had no voice.

And then the bottle was out of her hands, flung across the room, exploding against the cellar hatch. Glass rained down on the wooden boards, glass and _red_, splotching the trapdoor and the walls and the floor. She regretted it an instant later, when the scent of blood assaulted her nose, making her fangs slide out on reflex.

She tried to sheathe them back in, but couldn't.

Pitiless, the Voices laughed.

_"You asked for it."_

"No." She retorted, pressing her palm against her nose, trying to block out the scent.

"Monster. Monster. Monster. Monster."

_"Asked for it. Begged for it. Liked it."_

"No."

Sharpness began to fade from her vision, the objects losing their edges. The lines and the colors melded together, warping and bending, forming a surreal picture. The shadows, as if liquid, flowed from their proper places and pooled together in one single twisted mass.

"They've come for your heart come for your heart come for your heart –"

_"Filthy. Whore. Bitch."_

The shadows shifted and changed, taking shape. She was staring at a distorted version of her father, his eye sockets empty, his facial features twisted past recognizable. The ears were slanted back and the nose was batlike; the fangs were too long and protruded from between his lips; on his back, skeletal wings were attached.

_"Slut. Cunt. Worm. "_

Shifted, and she was staring at the bestial form of Molag Bal himself. Tendrils of shadows extended from its feet, and it inched closer and closer in perfect synch with every _thump-thump_ inside her. She had the irrational thought that if she could only slow her heartbeats, she could be safe a while longer –

_"Bringing it upon yourself again. Your fault. Want it. Like it."_

_This is not real, _she told herself. _It's all in your head –_

"In your head, in your head, in your head – Whacko. Freak. Freakfreakfreakfreak –"

Closer and closer the beast in the shadows. Serana slammed her eyes shut, vaguely aware of her own muted sobs, hugging herself. She felt something touch her. Didn't open her eyes. The feeling intensified and multiplied, things _crawling_ and _rubbing_ and _slicing_ against her skin, _cutting_ and _licking,_ _touching and touching and touching –_

"Nononono –" she slapped herself, trying to shake them off, eyes closed, the sensations piling up way past unbearable – "No!"

She opened her eyes and found herself mere inches away from her own bestial reflex. Stared into haunted bloodshot eyes, hers but not hers, heavy brows and horns bulging from the forehead. The not-Serana extended one long clawed hand, agonizingly slowly, index finger pointed towards her heart.

"Here for your heart your heart your heartheartheart – _and you'll fail. Disgraceful. Useless. Bitch._"

She tried to back away, but there was nowhere to escape to. Grasping, reaching wildly, her hands came upon a discarded empty bottle on the floor. Holding it by the neck, she hit it against the ground, shattering the glass into pieces. Closer and closer was the beast, and then it was all of them at once – her father, the Prince, herself.

She pointed the sharp end of the glass at _them_ in a vague, hopeless threat. They didn't stop, nearing until she could hear their breathing, until she could smell their acrid scent of death. She tried to hit them, but the bottle passed clean through, and then their hand twisted into a claw that crawled towards her chest –

_Thump-thump._

Serana shifted, pressed the broken bottle against her throat instead, and with a single smooth movement, slit her own neck open.

* * *

It took Rigel over a month to get his lab fully equipped, mostly due to long delivery times from Riften. He had flask of all shapes – conical, test tubes, pear shaped, beakers. He set up a small garden near where Gunmar kept his trolls, the dark and dank caves being ideal for the growth of fungi. The alchemy and the enchanting table came last – he'd ordered them from Winterhold.

And then, about a week after he was all set up, his workflow was disrupted when it turned out he'd have to share the lab with a new scholar – Sorine Jurard. Never mind that he was a _physician_ and she was a _physicist; _Isran couldn't really tell one from the other and didn't much care to either. To him, they were all bunched up together in a single "scientist" category.

The logistics were a pain at first. Her loud machinery stressed out his lab mice. She made a point to rebuild the alchemy table from scratch, and though admittedly the improvements were amazing, he hadn't been pleased to wake up one day to a torn-down lab, and it took him forever to figure out the apocalyptical number of gadgets she attached _everywhere_. And then there was the fact she used his ingredients. A _lot_.

Eventually though their logistics were sorted out, and Rigel decided that despite the occasional inconvenient explosion, he actually enjoyed the Breton's company. When they were not shooting murderous glares at one another, or raising questions about the other's methodologies, they got along just fine.

Currently, he was sitting in front of the distiller, watching liquids heating and bubbling, the vapor going through a series of tubes until a clear, limpid liquid finally dripped at the, as Sorine would call it, 'half-a-cone', or as he and the rest of the scientific community would call it, 'Erlenmeyer'_._ He scowled a bit at the barely comprehensible mess the woman had turned the equipment into, complete with an attached thermostat, five potency switches and a seemingly unlimited amount of energy-reusing appendages.

_Works wonders, but by the divines isn't it loud and ugly._

"The things you could blow up with this," Sorine muttered wistfully, popping on his side, head tilted, watching the alcohol trickle into the flask.

"Paws off!" He hissed with no real bite, playfully bumping his shoulder onto hers. "That's for _asepsis!_"

"Right, right," the woman rolled her eyes. Her hair was pulled back on a ponytail, there was a smear of oil on her cheek and a filthy piece of cloth on her shoulder, and she held a wrench on her right hand. "I don't think the power of your concentrated brainwaves make the distillation faster, you know. You don't actually have to watch the thing happen. You've done it a thousand times."

"I'm _thinking_," he replied for what had to be the billionth time. "You should try it sometime. It can save tons of materials, and it's free."

She tapped the wrench against the opposite palm, hopping from one feet to the other. His eyelid twitched. He liked the woman, really did, but most times he'd really rather have the energetic Breton a safe distance away from his worktable.

_Thinker _and_ tinker, _the Dawnguard had taken to calling the pair.

"Whatever, fine, just leave the thing doing the thing and get over here for a moment, I need you for something."

_Oh, this should be good._

He pushed against the floor with his feet and the wheeled chair – yet another of Sorine's inventions – slid over the ground and into her side of the lab. Her worktable was, as usual, complete chaos. Ignoring the scattered dwemer gyros, wrenches, screwdrivers, hammers, pliers and nails, he focused on the obvious new toy – a huge cube with cut corners.

"So hey, doc. Remember I asked you about your birthday and you said you didn't know?"

"Yes," he replied, arching an eyebrow.

"Soooooo… I was wondering, could it be today?" her eyes twinkled.

"I…guess?" his lips quirked in a slight smile.

"Excelent! Happy birthday, Doc. I made you this –" She hit the wrench on the box and it emitted a loud _bonk_.

"Hey!" he protested. "Stop hitting my…_thing!_"

She laughed, carelessly tossing the tool over the desk and wiping her hands on a rag that actually made them dirtier. "You don't even know what it is, do you?"

"Mmmh. It…looks like… one of those dwemer control cubes." He grinned. "I'm not sure what I'll do with it, but love it."

"I'm gonna bonk your _head_ with my wrench, Rigel," Sorine quipped back. "It was a dwemer control cube… before I emptied it and turned it into something else."

"Don't leave me hanging."

She pulled a drawer open and picked up a corked test tube filled with viscous liquid – _hey, isn't that mine…?! _

"It's a centrifuge!" The woman babbled excitedly, pulling the lid of the box off. "You just put your test tube here, y'see –" she shoved her hand in, attaching the glass somewhere in. Rigel stood up and extended his neck to the side to take a peek. She moved too fast for him, as usual, putting the lid back in. "Now you flick on this switch over here, choose the potency on the wheel, power it up with something flammable –"

He frowned at that last bit, already lost. Fortunately for him, he knew she didn't mind explaining things over and over.

" –and push this to turn it on!"

She slammed her palm on a button and the thing whirred into life, making a steady _vrrr _noise_._ He stared at the machine, still not quite sure what it actually did.

"Uh…"

"It separates the solid and liquid phases of any given solution," she explained.

"Oh. _Ohhh._"

That was actually incredibly useful, and he moved closer to inspect the machine further. Two pistons and a radiator later, he gave up on figuring how it worked and just accepted that it did, like everything else in that lab. He turned back to Sorine with a smile.

"Well?"

Rigel gave her a thumbs up. "Awesome, Tinker. I can use that, a lot."

"Well sure you can," She threw a dirty rag on his face and laughed.

"Oi!" he protested, shaking it off without using his hands so as to not get them greased. "I'm serious though," he blabbed, "I can see you went through great care to make this and it means the world to me that you'd care. I daresay you're growing on me – even though you take my stuff all the time!" he punctuated the last word with a poke to her ribs.

The Breton blushed and waved it off. "All for the good of the Dawnguard, of course. Helping you out is just a…side effect."

"Riiiiiiight," he teased, poking her again.

Their banter was interrupted by a knock on the door. Still smiling, he pushed his chair back to his side of the lab and wiped his face with the sleeve of his whitecoat.

"Come in!" the two called out together.

A small gap opened and Beleval poked her head in, scanning the room. The members of the Dawnguard avoided entering the lab ever since Agmaer bumped on one of Sorine's contraptions and it chased him across the castle for a whole hour before they finally figured how to deactivate it. "Thinker-Tinker," she greeted. "Ingjard sent me to fetch the doc. It's time to pull out Agmaer's stitches."

Rigel took a peek at his distiller and saw that the flask was half full. "Mmm. Sorine, think you can wrap this up for me _without taking my stuff or blowing it up?_"

The woman laughed. "No promises about that last part, doc."

* * *

She could feel the thin scar tissue on her neck when she woke up, closing at astounding speed, already fading against her fingers. Still as alive and as undead as always, of course – it was naïve to think a being such as her could meet her end at a shard of glass, though it never did stop her from trying.

She hadn't bled out to death, because she had no pulse.

Serana wore her choker to court that day.

"The pie and the die and the lie and the spy and the cry and the sky –"

The mahogany table from Valenwood. Her on one end, her father on the other. Face to face with him, staring at his distant gaze and troubled eyes, she wondered not for the first time if he had Voices of his own, and if he did, what did they tell him. Leaning her elbow on the table, she rested her chin on her palm and divagated in her thoughts.

"She wonders what are Vingalmo and Orthjolf arguing about now. She thinks lowly of them both."

She bit her bottom lip to make sure her mouth was still shut and eyed her plate blankly. It was merely decorative, of course; food was hardly ever served in Castle Volkihar. Their main courses rested in their goblets, filled and refilled through the night.

Serana looked briefly at her own meal. Her glass was half empty, and she felt she couldn't stomach another drop.

" – take action now and crush them while they're still bugs!" Orthjolf roared, slamming his fist on the table. It made her teeth rattle, and she frowned with annoyance, eyes still at her cup, watching it ripples break through the liquid.

"She tries to pick up the topic of the conversation so she can put an end to it."

"And I'm telling you it is a pointless waste of energy, because they'll never be anything more than that," Vingalmo answered with spite.

"She searches the court for a familiar face who can give her some direction."

Her eyes rested at Garan, who looked just as generally exasperated as she did, bless his soul. She arched a quizzical eyebrow at him, gesturing vaguely with her head towards the arguing vampires. The dunmer's lips quirked up in an amused smile, and he mouthed out a single word to her.

_"Dawnguard."_

Dawnguard, Dawnguard, now where had she heard that before? Frowning, she searched her memory for –

"The mice and the lice and the spice and the price and the vice –"

She searched her memory for –

"The ball and the fall and the call and the hall and the wall –"

She searched her memory for –

"The race and the face and the place and the grace and the mace –"

_Gods fucking damn it._

She resisted the urge to repeatedly bang her head against the thrice-blasted Valenwood mahogany table. Garan seemed to notice her distress, because he gestured with his fingers, grabbing her attention again. She squinted, focusing to make out his words –

"Bunkers," the Voice interjected just as the vampire's lips moved, completely throwing her off the message. She gestured for him to repeat it.

"Jumpers."

She gestured again.

"Rubbers."

And again.

"Panthers."

Serana put her hands over her head and tugged her own hair, unsure whether she should laugh or cry at this tragicomedy. On the corner of her vision, she noticed that save for Orthjolf and Vingalmo, the court had turned their attention to the exchange between Garan and her. She could see Harkon's eyes twinkle with mirth.

Garan paused and showed her both his palms to indicate he'd had an idea. Then he slid his fangs out, baring them, and dragged his index finger across his throat, very slowly mouthing out the word.

_HUNTERS!_ she finally made out. _Fucking vampire hunters. Of course._

She gave him a thumbs up and a half-smile.

"She recalls the peculiar young mortal she'd met at the day of her awakening, finally making the right connections."

_Ohhh. _Crossbows and a suncrest on the armor, digging through a vampire infested cave – that had to be it. No one else but a vampire hunter could fit that particular kind of stupidity.

"Crossed their path once," she voiced, interrupting either Vingalmo or Orthjolf, she didn't particularly care which. "They seemed quite harmless to be honest…?" She trailed off, vaguely remembering the encounter. The one she met must have been a green one, she deduced – he hadn't even pulled the trigger.

"As I was saying," Vingalmo agreed triumphantly. "Pray tell, Lady Serana, how long did it take you to wipe them out?"

"Didn't," the Voice answered. It was only when Orthjolf turned to her with pure scorn that she realized she'd actually said that out loud.

_Gods fucking damn –_

"And why was that?" the Nord demanded. Serana didn't like his tone.

"She wasn't sure whether he was real or yet another creature in her mind."

_Fuck you._

The vampire did her best to keep her face still and her tone nonchalant. She shrugged. "I had better things to do. Places to be. Didn't want to get blood on my clothes. Why bother? That's what _you_ exist for, isn't it, my dearest brutish vassal?"

There was a moment of tense silence on the table. She saw Harkon straighten up slightly, watching the exchange with renewed interest. And then Orthjolf bared his fangs at her. That was an unacceptable show of disrespect. For a moment, even the voice on her mind went still.

_"Kill him,"_ it suddenly hissed in her head. She dug her nails slightly on the table, tapping her index finger, using her free hand to grab her napkin and delicately wipe her lips.

"I'm sorry, I must have been distracted, I seem to have missed your 'yes, Lady Serana'," she replied, impassive.

"Because I didn't say it."

She grabbed her goblet absently, rolling its neck between her index finger and thumb. She tucked a strand of hair below her ear.

_"Kill him," _the Voice urged. Her muscles were tense, and she willed them to relax, paying close attention to her breathing.

"Orthjolf," she said in a monotone, looking past him to a point in space, still playing with her glass. "Antagonizing me would be…most unwise." She tilted her head. "I wasn't gone for long enough that you'd have time to forget the treatment due to the Lady of this house."

_"Kill him."_

"But you were absent long enough that I wonder why you are the lady of this house on first place," the other spat.

_"Kill him."_

She pinched the bridge of her nose and closed her eyes, body shaking ever so slightly. Every sound in the room seemed to grow distant, until she could hear nothing but the Voice's whispers. Orthjolf was still talking, but she could no longer make out his words. Her eyes met Harkon's, and they exchanged a look of – was it understanding?

_"Kill him."_

It didn't matter. She lifted her goblet, stared at her reflection in the glass – the reflection she knew was not there – and couldn't recognize herself. She put it down, feeling slightly nauseous. She felt as if a veil separated her from the world; objects seemed to zoom away and lose focus as if sucked by the horizon, and she remembered thinking it all felt so vertiginous and just so _unreal –_

_"Kill him."_

Serana stood, pressed her fingers on her forehead, the space around her dissolving into a blur.

_"Kill him."_

She stared, trying to piece together what was going on. A broken chair on her feet. Orthjolf's neck, twisted at an impossible angle. She could see the tip of a fork's handle in his left eyesocket, the other end of the kitchen utensil halfway poking out at the back of his skull, little brain bits stuck between its teeth. Half his jaw had been ripped and hung sustained by the skin flap from the other side, revealing the full length of his tongue, which fell to the side.

There was blood on her hands. She stared at them for a full ten seconds and all she could feel was a gripping exhaustion.

Serana walked back to her chair, grabbed her napkin and wiped herself clean with it. "Vingalmo, take care of this mess, will you?"

The Altmer nodded, his face paler than usual. She took her seat, legs crossed.

"As for the rest of you," she continued, her voice flat, without meeting any of the court member's eyes. She dropped the red-stained piece of cloth on the table and folded her hands together. "Please…know your places."

From the opposite end of the table, without any warning, Harkon laughed.

* * *

"Ow! Owowowow!" Agmaer complained. Resisting the urge to roll his eyes, Rigel used the tweezers to pull free the last of the stitches in the blonde's cheek. "Ow -!"

"It doesn't actually hurt to take them out, you know," he mumbled, putting his tools away and leaning closer to examine the scar. He rubbed his thumb against the tissue to check if the borders had closed properly.

"It sure isn't pleasant either!"

"Well you should have thought about that _before_ running into trouble face-first," he snapped back. He rubbed some herb oil over the wound to speed up recovery, then stared back to take a look at his handiwork.

"It'll leave a scar," Rigel concluded, slightly irked.

"It will?" Agmaer perked up, not even bothering to hide his excitement.

"Yes, Agmaer, a very ugly, very manly scar," he crossed his arms, tone utterly serious, even though in reality he what he expected was more of a thin faded line that would grow imperceptible with time.

"Awesome!" the other exclaimed, then cleared his throat. "I meant, awful! Oh gods, I hope it won't affect my chances with the ladies –" he paused. "You don't think it will, do you?" he finished, his tone uncertain.

_Do not facepalm in front of the patient_, he told himself.

"I'm sure they won't mind," he answered, moving to the corner of the room to feed his lab mice. _No,_ he had told Isran, he could _not_ see his patients in the lab. The leader had, after much complaining, given him a second chamber to work on. Ideally, he wouldn't have to keep his experiments on his attending room, but the lab was not a friendly environment for the rodents either, what with all the machinery, so he had to make-do.

"Great!" the other babbled. "Because I'm starting to think Ingjard has a thing for me –"

She didn't, but Rigel wasn't going to be the one to tell him that. "Mmmhm –"

"What about you and Sorine though?"

He lifted his head from his cage of mice to look at the blonde. "What about us?"

Agmaer jumped off from the bed and started to put his shoes back on. "Well, you know… everyone's talking. You two make a nice pair."

He thought back to the birthday gift the woman had prepared him, felt a bit of a blush crawl on his cheeks, and pushed the thought away. "Mmhhm. She's a friend."

"A friend?" the blonde insisted.

"A _good_ friend," he snapped, flushing.

"Aha –"

He was cut short by the ringing of the alarm bells that signaled the fort was under attack. Rigel jumped to his feet; Agmaer was already reaching for the crossbow strapped to his back and making his way to the door. The blonde hesitated for a second, turning to face him.

"Go!" he ordered. "I'll grab my things and take my position!"

He had very strict orders to arm himself but not join the front lines of any given battle, orders based on the simple logic that if the medic died, there would be no one to tend to the wounded. He finished packing his supplies and reached behind the door, where a blade hung. Strapping it to his waist, he made his way downstairs.

And then the castle was shook by a roar that rattled his very bones.

_What in Oblivion –_

He reached the bottom of the staircase and stopped at the open front door of the fort, watching the Dawnguard members outside, trying to determine the nature of the attacker.

_They are looking up – ?_

He lifted his head just in time to see a dragon swoop down from the skies.

* * *

Thanks for those who reviewed, you really made my day! For those who didn't run at my warning and read until here, thanks for the continued support, and welcome aboard the psychosis train; fasten your seatbelts, this will be one hell of a bumpy ride.

ScienceGuy23: Thank you! It took me a long while to decide the original spin I wanted to give this, because I didn't want to just write the same story with *insert your dragonborn here*. I'm happy to see you find it interesting!

Isprad: Thank you so much for your support! Constructive criticism really does help and your comment was a great boost to keep me writing!


	8. Ancient Power

_What in the name of all the divines –_

Rigel ducked behind the heavy stone door a split second before a river of fire rolled in. He shielded his eyes and stepped away from the unbearable wave of heat, cursing. He counted to five after the flames stopped, then leaned to the side and took a peek out. The beast roared.

The Dawnguard members were similarly taking cover behind whatever they could find; in the distance, he could see the archery range burn. Durak yelled indistinguishable commands, directing formations with gestures of his hands. The soldiers scurried around, but he could see even the orc was completely lost on what to do. Here and there, a crossbow shot was fired, though if the dragon was hit by any, it didn't show. It was no wonder they were so scattered - they were trained to fight vampires, not dragons.

His thoughts were interrupted when he spotted Mogrul running in, dragging a recruit on his back. He met the orc halfway, taking part of the weight on his shoulders. The smell of burnt flesh assaulted his nose. He held his breath as he helped carry the woman the last few meters to the center of the hall. Letting go of her for a moment, he ran to his bag, pulled out a white sheet and extended it on the ground, and then he had Mogrul lay her down on top of it.

He exchanged a few words with the orc on the rush before letting him run back to the field of battle, then ran his hands through his hair anxiously, assessing the patient. She was one of the newest recruits, Tilde, still ungraduated; he hadn't really gotten to know her well yet. He knelt down by her side to take a closer look, already shuffling through his bag for tools.

"Okay," he mumbled to himself. "Okay, okay. First things first – vitals."

Rigel fished a flask of alcohol from his materials and spilled some on his hands, rubbing them against one another. She was unconscious and that was a bad sign. Moving so that he faced the woman's head, he looked for signs of airway obstruction. A burn extended from ear to lip, covering almost all the left side of her face, charring her nostrils and neck. He checked the thorax for breathing and could only see the short rising and falling movements on one side. On the other – he winced slightly at the sight – armor and skin had fused together in one single blackened mass.

_Too complex, too complex – focus. Heart. Airway. Breathing. _

The thin pulse told him the heart was beating, though he wasn't sure for how much longer. He had to liberate the airways. With as much delicacy as he could muster, he pressed his fingers against the woman's lips and pulled them apart. He was only partly successful – the burnt side of the mouth had fused together and refused to open. Rigel reached for the scalpel and cut. Immediately, his hands grew damp with a mixture of blood and clear liquid from the blisters, but the flow was stopped short by the magical healing energy dribbling from his fingertips. New, pinkish skin erupted from where his hands touched wounded flesh, painting a bizarre mosaic on her face.

The cardinal rule of restoration magic was that the body healed itself; the magician's job was only to trigger and guide the process. Because of that, one could never demand from a body more than it could give, and in cases as grave as the one Rigel had in hands, he knew the usage of spells should be kept to a minimum, for as easily as they induced regeneration, they could end up draining the victim to death instead.

Parting the lips open, he pushed the jaw down as much as the skin would allow and gently pushed the tongue out of the way. The whistling of the woman's breath turned into a wheeze, and Rigel allowed himself some pause. Wiping his hands and the victim's face with a piece of cloth, he ran his fingers over her throat, assessing the depth of the burn. Considering how much to the side it laid, he thought it unlikely that the fire had damaged the trachea, but if she'd breathed in hot air, there could be inner burns that would impair breathing.

Rigel pondered on how to proceed for a second. While he didn't want to spend time and energy healing non-essential tissues, particularly considering how much the torso would demand of him, he had to make sure she could breathe. He rolled the scalpel between his index finger and thumb. The human throat was an entangled mess of blood vessels, nerves and muscle that he didn't quite feel confident enough to cut into.

Outside, men screamed, horses neighed, the beast roared, the noise of crackling fire echoed. He closed his eyes and told himself to focus. It could be that the throat would swell later on and obstruct the trachea, but for the moment enough air seemed to pass, so he chose to leave it be. Examining the destroyed armor, he put down the delicate surgical blade and holding his dagger instead, sliced free what remained of the leather strips that bound the suit together, then carefully applied upwards force on the breastplate, pulling it away from the skin millimeter by millimeter –

_Oh gods the smell –_

Back with the scalpel, separating skin from metal, freeing space for the lungs to expand. He had to be careful not to cut too deep, else he'd puncture the delicate sack that covered the lungs, causing them to collapse. Every time he burst a blister or cut through a vessel, he'd immediately heal the spot with quick bursts of magic to prevent more liquid loss. Where the burnt flesh was so stiff it impaired the breathing movements, he had to make very gentle incisions to recover flexibility. His progress was excruciatingly slow, and he knew it could take him hours to finally get the woman's health stable.

Among the harshness of the work, he barely noticed when one of the screaming voices got louder and closer, and only when he was tapped on the shoulder he looked up to see he had someone else to aid – Durak had just been dragged in and he was screaming his lungs out. It took Rigel less than a second to spot the reason: on his leg, which bled profusely, a piece of bone poked out. He flinched at the wound, his mind racing. Though magic could fix the lacerations the orc displayed over his body, he'd still have to realign the bone fragments manually, push them back into the thigh and stitch the cuts, else he could go into shock from blood loss.

That would take him time – twenty, thirty minutes – time that Tilde did not have. His hand resting over her throat, he knew her pulse was getting weaker by the second. Yet if Durak's wound had hit the femoral artery, which was possible considering the fracture site, then he could bleed out really quick. Cursing, closing his hand into a fist, he wiped his brow with the soft part of his arm, dissipated the Healing Hands spell he'd been holding, and reached for his bag, pulling out a small glass flask filled with ochre.

Spilling some of the yellow dust on top of his palm, he mixed it with a couple drops of alcohol and then used his index finger to paint a rune on the woman's forehead. He muttered a spell and the mark seemed to sink into the skin, changing color to a reddish hue. He pressed his index and middle fingers against the right side of her throat, and as he watched, the sign started to pulse in almost perfect synch with the vibrations he felt under his fingertips.

There were no other effects immediately visible, but he knew the enchantment would work its magic and slowly, evenly heal the woman over. It wasn't the ideal, vitals-centered restoration that should be done in this situation, but he hoped it would make do for long enough that he could check Durak over. Besides, he knew when it came down to it –

_When caught between two seriously wounded victims, the healer should choose the one with the best chance of survival._

Another deep breath. He pushed the thought away.

"Okay," he repeated. "Okay, okay. I got this."

Wiping his hands and once more washing them with alcohol, he ran off to where the orc had been placed, his back leaning against a pillar. The long femur bone had broken near the hip, and bright crimson blood flowed from the cut in jets. Back with the Healing Hands energy twirling between his fingers, he moved quickly to stop the flow, barely aware of the hall getting crowded with more and more soldiers. With a pair of tweezers, he pulled apart the splinters and dirt that had lodged on the wound, cleaning it as best as he could.

"I need someone to –" his voice was drowned out by the loud slamming of the stone doors, followed by the sound of thick wooden bars being dropped across it. The green of Durak's skin was a few shades too light, and the orc had stopped moving as best as he could and was bravely still. Rigel's speech had caught the orc's attention and he grunted, trying sit up straight. The orc's eyes were wide, his face sticky with cold sweat, and Rigel stopped his movements by gently placing a hand on his shoulders.

He turned back for a moment and scanned the room, until he managed to make eye contact with someone – Ingjard, looking ragged and tired. He motioned with his chin for her to come over and soon enough she knelt next to him.

"Rigel," her voice was strained. "What can I do for you?"

"I need you to hold him down," he explained. "Umm…there, by the shoulders; just hold him still for a moment. Durak –" he faced the orc. "On the count of three, I'm going to try to traction the bone back in. I'm going to put my hands right here –" Rigel hooked a palm behind the knee and the other under the lower thigh. "- and I'm going to pull. Is that okay?"

A curt nod. Rigel tensed his shoulder muscles and prepared. "One. Two –"

There was a furious yell when he yanked the leg back with all his might, the bone snapping back into place. Durak twitched so hard, he'd surely have dislodged the bone further if Ingjard hadn't been holding him down. As it was, she was thrown back by his movement, falling on her butt.

"Three! Three!" Durak yelled. "You said the count of three, you son of a –"

"Sorry," he mumbled sheepishly. "It had to be unexpected; I needed your muscles relaxed." He turned back to Ingjard. "I need something – a stick, or a sword would do – something to make a cast and immobilize his leg. And, uh, strips of clean cloth – there's a lot of it on my drawers back in the lab, maybe you could …"

"Yeah… yes, of course, I got it," the woman interrupted, standing up. She offered him a tense smile. "Be right back, doc."

"Durak," he continued once the other had left. He pulled the skin together and closed the wound, using stitches and resorting to magic where the gap between the skin flaps was too wide. "How're you holding up?"

The orc grunted something unintelligible. Rigel pressed his lips together, his fingers moving so fast they were a blur. "You think you can stand still for a while? Ingjard will soon be back and I'll bandage you up, but I'd like to check on –"

"Oi, Rigel!" Agmaer yelled from the middle of the room. "Your thing is doing something – I, uuh, I – don't think it's supposed to do that –"

_Shit._

He exchanged one last look with Durak, and the orc nodded. Dashing, he skidded down next to Tilde, sliding on his knees so that he was next to her face. On her forehead, the rune he'd drawn had gone from reddish to bright yellow and was flickering unstably. He pressed his fingers against her throat and found no pulse. Cursing profusely, he pulled the sleeves of his coat back to the elbows and interlaced his fingers, then placed them on top of her sternum and started pumping down. He knew after the third or fourth push that his massage was ineffective; the stiff armor pieces interfered and didn't let the chest be compressed.

_I need to shock her but with this much metal –_

Her lips started turning blue.

_Gods damn._

"Get away," he barked out, and Agmaer backpedaled. His rune shimmered. Taking a deep breath, he straddled her and pressed his thumb under the woman's right collarbone. With the other hand, he extended his index and middle fingers and rested them sideways on the chest, slightly below the nipple. He took a deep breath, charged up a spell of Sparks and braced himself.

_This is going to hurt._

He felt the magicka leave his body and be converted into electricity – and then the woman convulsed, her back arching and members twitching. A second later, the armor pieces lodged in her chest exploded into smoke. The smell of burnt flesh once more filled the air, and Rigel's brain registered pain on his palms where the current had passed. The tips of his white coat were smoldering. Coughing, waving the smoke away, his hands charred and hurting, he watched his rune go out completely –

And return, its color back to the red tone of before. He released a breath he didn't know he'd been holding. The rune pulsed.

Once.

Twice.

The red abruptly flickered again, this time turning into black pigment. It lasted for two seconds, then melted into the skin and didn't return. Rigel leaned forwards and looked for a pulse, but the wounds in his hands made it impossible to feel anything, and he knew he'd find none. He let his arms fall limp, made himself move away from her, closed his eyes.

"Dead," he declared, and it was only when his voice broke that he noticed the dampness on his cheeks. He felt hands on his shoulders – Agmaer, ever supportive – that helped him up and brought him into a hug. Words were spoken but he found it hard to pay attention. His eyes spotted Ingjard reentering the room, and on the back of his mind, he found the strength to spring back into action.

_It's okay to be sad, _he told himself. _It's okay to be sad and cry. But right now, there are things you must do._

He cast Healing Hands again, this time for himself, and watched the bumps on his palms meld back into the skin; the burn was deep and extensive enough that he felt quite a considerable drop of energy. Still, he made himself walk to where Durak laid. The orc gave him a sympathetic look but let him work in silence, and within another ten minutes, he was done wrapping the broken leg around with cloth, binding it and keeping it extended with the bandages.

When Rigel looked back to the room, he found many wounded faces and a _lot_ of work to be done. He noticed that Isran had been watching him, waiting for him to be done. Taking a deep breath, he gave the Dawnguard leader a briefing.

"Sir," he began. "Durak's state is stable, but he won't be fighting anytime soon. I lost Tilde – her burns were too bad. Other members in the hall seem to need stitches and have burns to be tended to; I'll address them now."

"Do any need your immediate attention?" Isran queried.

Rigel paused for a second to rescan the room. "At first glance, I see no other urgencies, sir."

"Then they'll have to wait. Sorine needs your assistance in the laboratory to devise –"

A loud crashing sound drowned the ending of the sentence, followed by a roar. The room shook and a thin cloud of dust descended from the roof, coming off as waterfalls of sand where the stone had cracked. Rigel grimaced and covered his ears when the beast let out another screech, and then, bizarrely enough, a word.

_"Dovahkiin."_

_Say what now…?_

Isran pinched the bridge of his nose and sighed. " – to devise a way to deal with that." The man finished. "We can't beat it as it is, and for some reason it refuses to leave."

He looked up at the roof and wondered how much a dragon weighted and for how long the old stone structure would hold. The worried faces around the room told him the soldiers were asking themselves the same question. He could hear the profoundly unsettling sound of the creature walking on top of the Fort's arches.

"What does it want?" he blurted out without thinking. The leader frowned and gave him a wary look.

"How am I supposed to know? Did it look open to dialogue?"

He blushed and looked away, berating himself for talking too much. "No, sir. I'll – I'll be on my way."

He found Sorine dashing between three experiment tables, at least one of which was steaming. Tossing his destroyed coat to the side and grabbing another from the rack near the door, he joined her on her flurry, immediately being handed a flask with bubbling liquid. He held on to it for about fifteen seconds before the woman took it back from his hands, twirled away and spilled the contents into a pot.

"Umm…"

"Grab me that glass over there - yes, that one; good, now light up that fire, will you?"

He snapped his fingers and a flame flickered into existence under the pot. Tilting his head, he stepped closer to the middle worktable to take a peek – only to be pushed back by the nord woman.

"Nuh-uh-uh. Step back, brainy, that's volatile. Pass the vial with the green cork – careful, it's acid."

He did as he was told, being extra careful with his fingertips. Sorine pulled on the plug twice, and when it refused to come off, she hit the tube on the side of the pan and cracked it like one would crack an egg. The acid hit the solution with a hiss, and the woman tossed the broken glass into a trash box. She stared at the whatever-it-was for a good five seconds, then stepped back.

"Whew, I'm glad our heads are still on our shoulders. Let's hope it remains that way for the next ten minutes while this thing gets ready."

_And that is why Isran didn't send anyone else here,_ he mused.

"Very comforting. So, what's the plan?"

He wasn't truly aware of how weak he felt until he allowed himself to take a seat. As soon as the familiarity and comfort of his chair and his lab washed over him, his legs felt wobbly and he suddenly wasn't so sure he'd have the strength to stand up again.

"Boom! Boom is the plan. Swords are no good because it's impossible to hit; crossbow bolts are no good because with that thick scaly skin they just don't land a scratch. The solution for a very large winged lizard is a very large boom. Are you alright, doc? You're looking pale."

He covered his face with his palm, feeling slightly ill. "Downstairs' a mess. Lots of wounded, burnt – I'll be needing a ton of balms and oils. Durak's got his leg broken so bad he'll probably have a limp for the rest of his life…and I couldn't save Tilde. "

"Oh." She the ground with her feet and her chair rolled closer until it bumped his. "I'm… I'm so sorry, Rigel. I… didn't know her very well, but I'm sure you did your best… hey."

He wiped his eyes with his sleeve. Sorine landed him a punch on the shoulder, and he cracked a half smile in response. "I'll be okay." He exhaled in a deep sigh. "Tell me about your newest trinket."

Her eyes twinkled and she turned to the boiling liquid. "Remember when that armored troll died and you gathered all its fat in a jar and had me mix it with lavender to make soap from it?"

"…you turned troll fat into explosives?"

"Something like that, yeah." She grinned, then stood up and blew off the fire that heated the pan. She picked up a wooden spoon and carefully scooped up a paste from the bottom. "There we have it."

Rigel eyed the substance with interest.

"Mmmh. How volatile are we talking about here?"

"…do not let it fall."

"Oh." He blinked. "So how are you planning to get it to…you know… explode on the dragon's face?"

Sorine opened a drawer and produced a thin, long copper tube. It was hollow in the middle, and she slowly, very carefully filled the cavity with bits of her paste. "Remember that Dwemer ballista my contacts in Riften mmmh, _acquired_ from the Markarth museum?"

"Aha."

She pulled a large arrowtip from the same drawer and screwed it on top of the tube until it clicked. Then she held the projectile with both hands and lifted it up for him to see.

"Well, I have it working. We get one shot. Large explosion. And I mean _huge._"

He scratched his head. Asking too many questions to Isran had been a mistake, but Sorine was a science person like himself, and science people were curious, inquisitive people. The Dawnguard leader didn't much care for anything not vampire related as long as his fort wasn't being burned down, but Sorine was likely to have ideas –

"Septim for your thoughts?"

"Just wondering if you had any clues about what it wants. Isran was… less than receptive to speculation."

The woman scoffed. "Isran doesn't care for much beyond how to get rid of it. But hey, I like your question. No clue though. No one's seen a dragon since that incident with the Septims, and that was less of the creature we have here and more of a divine dragon of light and holy."

"You think it's rational?"

"Rational? No, Rigel, it's not just rational, it's rational and _smart._ The way it doesn't land, the way it's sitting, waiting us out, that's all so deliberate."

"I thought I heard it speak… earlier on." He muttered.

She faced him. "What's it say?"

"_Dovahkiin._" The word rolled off his tongue with strange ease, and he frowned.

Sorine tilted her head. "Interesting…interesting. Dovah – that's, hmmm, that's 'dragon' in dragon actually. I don't know enough about linguistics to tell you what the whole thing could mean, though. We should get moving – before it outsmarts us, eh?"

"I'll grab the ballista, you just… hold on to that unstable projectile."

"Sure you don't want a hand? It's heavy metal stuff," she teased.

"Quite sure."

He stood up and had to steady himself against the table, feeling dizzy. His vision darkened for a second, and Sorine took a step forward to help him. He stopped her by raising his palm and backing away.

"Nonono – divines, Sorine, mind your explosive. I'll just –" he walked over to his cabinet and opened it, proceeding to grab a green vial from a row of bottles. It had a label with 'stamina' scrawled hastily on it. " – just have one of those stimulants we make for the soldiers and I'll be peachy."

Ignoring Sorine's protests, he took the drink with one long gulp, and the taste in his mouth was bitter. He'd never actually tried one before, just manufactured them for the Dawnguard based on well-known recipes, so he wasn't very sure what to expect. The effect was almost immediate – his heartbeat sped up just as everything around him seemed to slow down. He blinked, things looking abruptly very sharp. He shook his head to clear it, squeezing his eyes together, rubbing his scalp with both hands.

"Woah." He looked at his hands and they were twitching without command. He could hear his own breathing, short and fast, together with the loud thudding of his heart. "Wooo-oooah. Sheesh. I can see how this gets 'em all riled up. Okay, let's –" He moved behind the large ballista in what felt like one single hop and leaned against it, testing the weight with a push of his shoulder. It rolled with ease. "Let's do this."

They made their way to the main hall, soldiers stepping in to help him drag the ballista down the stairs. He let them take the full weight on the last dozen steps; his mouth was dry and when he touched his lips with his thumb, they felt too warm. He could feel the beginnings of a headache throb. Agitated, he made his way down, two steps at a time.

He stood next to Sorine, hopping from foot to foot while the woman explained their plan.

" – you lure out the dragon. I'll have to shoot from the door, while it's distracted – I'm quite certain it's smart enough that it knows it should avoid big arrows. What it doesn't know is the little kick I've added to this thing. And by that I mean –" she made a circular gesture with her open hand. "Boom."

"Boom," he repeated, mimicking her.

Isran slowly turned his head to the side and arched an eyebrow at him. "You okay, son?"

"Ja klar. Sí señor. Geh kinbok. Sir, yessir, sir."

The man faced Sorine instead. She waved it off. "Doc got his first taste of a stimulant. He'll be a little…eccentric for a while."

"Great. Just great. A gods damned dragon. A pyromaniac scientist. A completely high medic –"

"Lay off him, Isran, he couldn't _stand,_" Sorine snapped. "Now, we need –"

He couldn't hear her anymore. Her mouth was moving, sure, and he knew there should be sounds, but suddenly they weren't making any sense to his brain. He took a step back, touched his temples with is index and middle fingers, stared at his hands as if they were something from another world. Things shimmered, and a low hum hissed its way into his ears.

" – never seen that reaction before –" Isran's voice rumbled.

" – don't think that's supposed to happen, no –" Sorine, with clear concern. " – take him to have a seat –"

Hands on his shoulder, grabbing him, pulling him away, pushing him down to the floor. He sat on the ground though he felt like running; and then, abruptly, the buzzing on his head got louder and turned into _actual_ drumming – and voices. Talking, babbling voices.

_"Dovahkiin, Dovahkiin, naal ok zin los vahriin –"_

_I'm having a stimulant-induced delirium._

The stone doors being pushed open. People running out. Screams, screeches. His stomach turned. He tugged on his sleeves, on his collar, tried to get the coat off, yanked the buttons. His hands were damp with cold sweat. He opened and closed them until his tendons ached.

_"Wah dein vokul mahfaeraak ahst vaal –"_

"Ahrk f-f-fin norok paal graan –" he babbled, hugging himself, digging his fingers against his forearms. " – fod nust hon zindro zaan –"

He stumbled to his feet, lacking balance. It was hard to walk but he couldn't bear to stand still. The colors, the sound – the world seemed off. Outside, fire and smoke. Flashes of wings. Sorine and Beleval together, aiming the ballista. Isran led the soldiers to the left, Agmaer leading a second group to the right.

_"Dovahkiin, fah hin kogaan mu draal –"_

_"Dovahkiin, Dovahkiin –"_

The voices multiplied, droning out every other sound, building up his own personal choir. The dragon roared. Crossbow bolts being fired with multiple clangs. It circled around, but refused to land, diving down to spew fire every once in a while.

_"Huzrah nu, kul do od, wah aan bok lingrah vod –"_

_"Dovahkiin, Dovahkiin –"_

_It's after me, _he realized with absolute certainty. _The word he said is the same word the voices in my head –_

He paused, though about how absolutely insane all that was, burst out laughing hysterically and then told himself it was surely the drug paranoia talking. Still, his conviction was unshakable and he was far too restless for his rational side to win this struggle. He made his way to the door, the voices louder with each step, certain that he could make the dragon land if only – if only –

He was by the doorframe, the world a blur; things slowed and things sped in a pace so sickening he felt the urge to hurl. He looked up to the skies, followed the dragon with his eyes, feeling something within him change, something stir, unfamiliar feelings bubbling up within him.

_"Ahrk fin tey, boziik fun, do fin gein – "_

Anger, something foreign to the quietude of his being, fury like he hadn't felt in years, a burning rage of the same kind that led him to bash a vampire's skull to dust in the past. Anger at the voices singing in his mind, anger at himself for taking the stimulants on first place, but mostly blind hatred directed towards the beast that attacked from above, for the lives it had taken –

_"Wo lost fron wah ney dov, ahrk fin reyliik do jul –"_

And for its claws and its teeth and its wings, because _how dare it –_

_How dare it fly so free when I am trapped in this body so frail and weak –_

"Hey. Hey!" He yelled, taking a step forward, a veil of red fogging his vision. "You want your _fucking Dovahkiin, _yeah? _Krosis! _You want your fucking –"

Hands around his waist, being dragged back inside against his will, people cursing his entire family line –

_I'm out of my mind._

But it had worked. It had _worked_. His words had, as if by miracle, grabbed the dragon's attention, and seeing him be brought back indoors was the last straw for the beast that had been waiting for so long. The dragon roared, target in mind, and then finally, _finally, _after slowing down yet again to barbecue them, its feet touched the ground and it landed heavily, making the earth shake. The Dawnguard soldiers didn't waste a second, circling it.

It turned to face him, and their eyes met for a brief second – enough to make him furious again, enough to trigger another rage. Struggling against the men who dragged him, he was vaguely aware of his own voice shouting out curses, swear words in a language he had no means of knowing yet felt painfully familiar and right on his lips.

"Clear the line!" Sorine's voice registered, and he was so used to heeding her warnings he threw himself to the side despite his frenzy.

He landed hard on his shoulder, tendrils of pain shooting up his arm, and saw a distinct expression of comprehension cross the dragon's face when it saw the ballista. It opened its wings to take to the skies again, shaking soldiers off its back, wings and tail. The Dawnguard members let themselves be thrown, rolling out of the way, already aware of what was coming, all but Agmaer, who clung stubbornly to one of the spikes in the dragon's back.

"Clear the line!" she repeated.

Agmaer stuck his blade time and again on the beast's wings, trying to find a weak spot between the scales. Irritated, it stood on its hind legs, flapping, twitching sideways, and yet the blonde wouldn't let go.

"Shoot!" Isran yelled from the battlefield. "Shoot, shoot, shoot!"

The snapping and clacking of machinery that released enormous tension, the whoosh of the arrow cutting the air; the ire in the dragon's face turned to understanding, and when it realized the arrow would be unavoidable, it lifted its tail on the air in order to intercept it on the hard scales. Rigel rolled belly down, closed his eyes and covered his ears, protecting his face with his elbows –

'Boom' did not quite cover what happened next. People would later report that the explosion on that day could be heard all the way to Riften. He did not look at the blast, but he could not avoid the shockwave of hot air that picked him off the floor and sent him flying across the room like a doll made of straw. His back hit the wall and the collision knocked all the breath off him. Had he not been completely deafened by the detonation, he would have heard his own ribs cracking.

The pain was night-on unbearable, but either the stimulants or the adrenaline, perhaps both, prevented him from blacking out. His coat was completely gone and so was the part of his tunic that used to cover his back, his skin reddened, bleeding from dozens of cuts made by debris. He laid in the ground for what fell like ages, too overwhelmed to even move, and yet when the dust settled and he could see again, he found he was the first to stand.

Rigel took hesitant steps towards the pile of rubble that was once the entrance. He crossed Sorine on his way, unconscious, bleeding from a deep cut on her forehead. He promised himself he would tend to her, would tend to all of them, but he couldn't do that yet, because _first. _First, he had to see. He climbed the debris with as much difficulty as one would climb the Throat of the World, and then he rolled rather than descended to the earth outside.

The dragon – or what remained of it –laid there, a crater around it, and only upon seeing it Rigel could finally understand the magnitude of the blast. The tail, which had been used to block the blow, was completely gone – scales, muscles, bones, all vanished without a single trace. A side of the dragon's face had disappeared with it, and almost a third of the skull was missing. No jaws, no tongue. What remained of it had been stripped down to blackened bone, save for a single eye still on the socket, one bare horn above it. The hind legs – gone. The bottom part of the torso – gone. One of the wings – completely gone. There were no comprehensive innards on the exposed abdomen, only pure charcoal. He was seeing, at most, half a dragon.

Holding onto his pained ribs, he slid down towards the gruesome scene, not sure he'd be able to climb out of the hole afterwards, refusing to search for any traces of what had become of Agmaer. And then the yellow eye twitched and moved, slit pupils rolling to meet his, and he realized with horror that _it was still alive_. He stopped in front of it, gaping, torn between feeling anger and feeling pity, and he fell to his knees in front of the globe and stared at it and asked himself the question until he couldn't hold the urge to voice it any longer.

"…why don't you die? Just – just go. Just die, why don't you? What are you waiting for?" he croaked. The dragon did not answer; Rigel didn't really think it could make any sound. "Die," he muttered. "_Die,_" and it sounded more like a command. _"Aav Dilon."_

The pupil dilated at the words, and something in the world seemed to shift. The drums on his ears, which had gone silent after the blast, suddenly echoed a single beat, the voices roaring wordlessly, oscillating their tunes between two notes. At first, when he felt air caress his skin, he thought it was just the wind, but one look upon the dragon was enough to tell him something else was happening.

The destroyed body was suddenly complete, whichever was missing substituted for spectral versions made, it seemed, purely of light. Rigel stood, took a step back, tripped and fell on his butt, gaping at the half-organic, half ethereal figure in front of him, promising himself to never, _ever_ take stimulants again. And then the solid part of the creature started to dissolve, skin and muscles peeling away and dissipating into cinders that were swept away by the wind. The eye was the last part to disappear, and when it did, all that remained of the dragon was its phantom.

It was hard to look at. Rigel knew that ghosts sometimes appeared, blue specters found mostly in tombs that brandished weapons and left behind a trail of ectoplasm. But this, this was something else entirely. He couldn't determine a color for the apparition, whatever it was; rather, it reflected every hue, as if made of an immaterial crystal. The air around it vibrated, filled with a static that made every hair on his body stand on end, humming. For as long as it stood still, Rigel held his breath.

And then, like water going down a drain, the figure started losing shape, spiraling into a single funnel of energy whose tip pointed directed at him. An abrupt drop in air pressure made his ears pop.

_Oh holy shit no way –_

Back in Dimhollow cave, magic had leaked into him from his fingers. The sensation was something similar, yet crucially different in scale. Rather than forming tendrils that entered him from a single spot in his body, he was drowned in the magic that penetrated his being by every pore. It was the difference between waking under a drizzle and being thrown without warning in the frozen waters of the Sea of Ghosts.

His body burned and tingled and itched, all at the same time; he thought he felt his broken bones mend, but couldn't be sure. Sensations washed over him, tastes and smells and colors that he could not name, memories that were completely alien, and his brain struggled to process feelings that had no place in his nature – the exhilaration of taking a wave of hot air on his wings, the raw power of his claws and fangs and the fire in his throat, and conversely, the melancholy of being something eternal.

The last of the soul, for there could be no other name for it, finally entered his body, the end of the funnel hitting his chest, and when it did, he was suspended in time and in space, and he _saw._ Dragged to a place where time had no direction, he saw the past and the future of men and of dragons and of Tamriel itself; he saw what came before and what would come after and couldn't tell them apart; where he was, there were no such distinctions. He saw all those things that were too much for his mind to comprehend, none of which he would later be able to remember or put into words. But mostly, the one thing that would stick with him.

Held for a moment in that fraction of infinity, he saw the world begin, and he saw it come to an end.

"So be it," he whispered, perhaps to himself, perhaps to the divines who surely watched. And then he was just himself again, no drugs and dragon souls addling his mind, shaking and dirty and so very tired. The wounds on his body were gone, but he now carried a new one, on his spirit, one his medical knowledge could not reach or even understand, one he didn't think could ever be healed.

"So be it," he repeated, and opened his eyes, and dragged himself to his feet, and pushed those final two images to a corner of his mind not ever, ever to be touched again.

* * *

Guest 1: As you can probably tell by now, you guessed right! I'll have the whole dragon soul - dragon word mechanic work a bit different here, because while the whole commercial "trade a soul for a new word" thing works well as a game mechanic, it doesn't feel very, hmmm... organic for me to write. Thanks for the revew!

Isprad: Thank you for your review! I'm glad you enjoy my characterization. Serana's psychotic crisis was honestly really, really hard for me to write; perhaps the most emotionally draining scene I ever typed, and I wondered for a long while whether I should actually put it in the story. Your feedback is really helpful, thanks again!

Guest 2: Thanks for the enthusiasm! This chapter ended up taking longer and being longer than I originally planned.

Okay, so, a few notes on this chapter:

\- It was different to write a dragon fight from the eyes of someone who is, by all means, a support division character. I liked the experience; I hope I properly conveyed the message of what a fight is on the perspective not of the fighter but of someone who works in the sidelines.

\- Restoration magic that can fix anything, easy? Not here

\- Dragon fights without serious consequences and casualties? Not here

\- I hope the NSA won't hunt me down for googling too much about nitroglycerin. Thanks, Fight Club.

\- I'm not sure any of you ever gave too much thought to what are stamina potions and how or why they work. Perhaps you envision them a bit like, say, caffeine. Well, no one will ever convince me that they aren't actually the bastard children of cocaine and crystal meth.


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